— Mahmud Sipra
Mahmud Sipra is a best selling author and an independent columnist.
That Gulgee was head and shoulders above the rest of his contemporaries was simply because there was always more to Gulgee than his natural dexterity with the brush
The people who killed my friend Gulgee didn’t just kill a man; they killed a part of our history and choked a vital part of the creative soul of a country forever.
Pakistan will probably never have an artist of his stature, his talent, his versatility and his genius. Gulgee was the last of a vanishing breed.
Long after we are dead and forgotten his works, his bold and brilliant calligraphy, his portraits of the great men and women of our time, his flourishing sketches of players and peasants of a country and its people that he loved so well — will hang on ornate walls as silent sentinels of an era now gone and softly tell of a man who was always called upon to breathe life, colour and beauty into whatever shape and form his hands worked on.
It is a supreme irony that his tragic end had to come at the hands of an assassin or assassins who were from among our own people. There is no more cruel end to a man who sought nothing else in life but to paint the people of his soil with all the colours of the rainbow only to have the palette brutally snatched from him, leaving us to contemplate what other wondrous image was about to emerge from his unfinished canvas.
His calligraphy of Quranic verses on canvas, in stone and in metal embellished with precious gems is to be found in the palaces of Saudi Arabia, the elegant homes of Houston, New York, Paris and London. The golden horned moons atop the dome of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad were painstakingly shaped by Gulgee. The gold frieze with Sura e Rahman exquisitely sculpted in the Kufic script at the inner entrance of the presidential mosque probably dwarfs every other decorative piece of the President’s House in Islamabad.
His portraits of Mr Jinnah are the “Official” State portraits of the founder of the nation. As is his portrait of the late Aga Khan. He once said to me: “I have done many portraits of important people and I have done all of them with the eye of an artist but the ones I have done of the Quaid, His Highness the Aga Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, I did with my heart and my soul.”
That Gulgee was head and shoulders above the rest of his contemporaries was simply because there was always more to Gulgee than his natural dexterity with the brush. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Soil Mechanics, and later obtained a Master’s degree in engineering from Columbia. Not very many people in those days would have guessed that the dapper 30-year-old chief engineer who was overseeing the construction of the Warsak Dam-in the 1960s by the name of Abdul Mohammad Ismaili was to find his true vocation as a celebrated artist and that his signing his name as “Gulgee” to his paintings would one day be akin to a banker putting his signature to a cashier’s check. .
When the late President Ayub Khan went on a State visit to France and America, he included Gulgee in his entourage to accompany him and his stately daughter Mrs Nasim Aurangzeb. It was only during the official dinner at the White House, with President John F Kennedy and Mrs Kennedy playing hosts, that the purpose of Gulgee’s presence became evident. The press corps was doing their job of recording the event on film but it was Gulgee who, to the delight of the American First lady, was asked to chronicle moments from that historic visit on his sketchpad.
I have seen some of those sketches with Gulgee along with the ones he did of Charles De Gaulle at the Elysee Palace. Gulgee narrated a wonderful anecdote of that visit. “President De Gaulle was a shade taller then even President Ayub and the photographers were having a difficult time keeping both of them in frame. I didn’t have that problem. So when President Ayub introduced me to the French President who looked down at my diminutive frame and said show me I sort of froze for a moment. I then held out the pad:
“Montrez-moi”. Then putting on his glasses, he observed in French: “Hmm. Very good. You have my head and my torso in proportion. For the most part people have a tendency to draw me in caricature. I would like to keep one — may I?”
Gulgee dutifully obliged. A photo opportunity not missed by the world’s press.
I probably would never have come to know Gulgee had it not been for his younger brother, the late Agha Sadrudin Ismaili, Aghaji to his friends and to me. If Gulgee was the artist and the sculptor, Aghaji was no less a calligrapher, a sculptor and a lens man. In fact it became difficult at times to tell the difference between one brother’s calligraphy from the other. They were both that good.
I owe a debt of gratitude to all the three brothers.
To Gulgee, for having gifted me a lovingly sketched portrait of my father; to Aghaji, for the loyalty and friendship he gave me when it had ceased to be fashionable to know me and to the youngest brother, Colonel Nuri — a surgeon in the British Army — who operated on my 5-year-old niece, Sarah who had been severely burnt in an accident.
Above everything else, it is their humanity that I never got a chance to repay.
Pakistan has been blessed for having produced some great artists and painters: Chughtai, Sadeqain, Gulgee, Ahmed Parvez, Shakir Ali, Laila Shazada, Jamil Naqsh, Bashir Mirza, Mansur Aye to mention only a few. Most of them are no longer with us but their work remains with us. No government has ever contemplated sharing their legacy with either the people or the world at large.
A simple postage stamp replicating the works of these great artists would be one way to celebrate these unsung heroes. It may inspire some other young boy or girl to aspire to be another Gulgee, a Jamil Naqsh or a Laila Shazada.
In the larger interest of preserving Gulgee’s legacy, I am going to take the liberty — through this column — to appeal to the conscience and decency of the man who stole the The Kathak Dancer — a riveting mural done in various shades of marble by Gulgee — which was stolen by someone from my house in Lahore. It is a signed original. It doesn’t belong to you; in fact it doesn’t belong to me either anymore. It now belongs to the people of Pakistan. Give it back. Deliver it to the secretary of the Arts Council or any other Arts gallery. They will instantly recognise it. There is not another like it. No questions asked.
Gulgee has now gone to the place where all such God’s gifted people go. I am going to miss him. We are all going to miss him. Given the scope of the tragedy, no one will miss him more than his young son Amin. His loss is immeasurable. He lost both his parents. It will be up to him now to help preserve and protect the priceless legacy that his father has left him.
There is nothing else left for someone like me to say except: Goodbye old friend. Hello legend.
Mahmud Sipra is a best selling author and an independent columnist.
Ismailimail 