Sadequain was a poet among the painters and a painter among the writers. In fact he was a highly successful blend of literature, arts and philosophy and the accent on 'content' in Sadequain's paintings is not different from the one coursing through his poetry. For the writers of the country Sadequain was a representative of the preeminence of literature. The writers would have to find someone among the painters to act like a bridge, which Sadequain did so effortlessly. His last public appearance was at the launching ceremony of Razi Akhtar Shauq's collection. I am not surprised that even those who do not have a genuine feeling for arts are mourning his death. Sadequain belongs to that generation of painters who could be called really homegrown. Born in Amroha (India) in 1930 in a well-to-do family he gave an early indication of his artistic brilliance in his hometown. During his period of adolescence his neighborhood walls served as his canvases. The charcoal was, thus, the first medium and his charcoal drawings became the talk of the town. He graduated from Agra University. He taught drawing for a brief stint at Imam-ul-Madaris High School in Amroha.

It was after his migration to Pakistan in 1950 that his elder brother, a senior official at Radio Pakistan, found to his surprise that in Sadequain there was an artistry who merited the same kind of attention which Van Gogh got from his elder brother John. Surprise after surprise came to Sadequain and to his early supporters as he embarked on his journey. He proved to be so precocious that nothing satisfied him except compressing decades in days, and days in moments synonymous with the grand configurations symbolizing the nation’s drive towards discovering it’s rationale. He is relevant to this column for one simple reason: he was a serious rubai poet - a genre, which is dying out for the simple reason that rubai, demands of a rich grounding in the classics.

Now that he has died, the art critics would be busy in evaluating him as a painter but an equally important aspect, which should continue to draw our attention, is what made him a unique artist and poet, rolled into one.

EXISTENTIALISM
I believe that the vogue of existentialism impressed Sadequain so much in the 1950s that he along with some contemporary writers, took up the theme of existentialist fixation. His paintings and rubaies tend to explain each other. There is a marked complementarily - rather cohesion - between the two disciplines and Sadequain used to say at times, that he won't be surprised if his stature as a rubai poet would compare well with his reputation as a painter. I should regard this high opinion of his poetry with the lurking desire in him to come unto his family tradition. He couldn't forget that it was his grand-grandfather Amir Ali who taught Mir Taqi Mir his first lessons in poetry and still further - the Mir Anis's father also owed his initiation into poetry to one of his ancestors. Josh Malihabadi could easily be regarded as the most important of the rubai poets of Urdu. Rubai has a certain rhythm, which is very difficult to master and Sadequain tried his hand at rubai with such ease and brilliance that very few could imitate him. His illustrated anthology, 'Rubaiyyat-e-Sadequain,' written in his own hand, is perhaps a unique book and the history of Urdu poetry doesn't have any other book of comparable merit. As I said earlier that Sadequain started off as an existentialist painter content-wise. In an age when painters are generally so wary of 'content' that they frown upon the very idea a painter having some 'content' to share with the students of art, it was really an uphill journey to insist on a viewpoint. In quite a few of his rubaies, Sadequain returns to the theme of freedom time and again. Like a proverbial complainant ushered in a royal court of the medieval time - this is, of course what the classical diction portrays - the poet in Sadequain questions the very wisdom of creation without the accompanying freedoms. Freedom, even if it has to be exercised in a state of complete withdrawal from the world, its virtue in itself and Sadequain's poetry - even it is to remain a second fiddle to his painting - skirts with lofty ideas. The way he painted Ghalib, lqbal and Faiz is the living testimony of his appreciation of the classical spirit. The classical spirit Sadequain once told this writer is something he is born into. He thought that he was born into the classical spirit. Amroha of his childhood was a city, which had managed to keep a lot of 18th- century facade. Time was plentiful. Modem ideas were looked down upon. Sadequain had chosen to be a modern. In a way he had chosen to be a rebel. But like a good rebel, he retained the healthy part of tradition to serve him in good taste. As a poet he started off his journey with ghazal. As a painter he took to portrait painting, subscribing to the school of realism, though with a touch of lyricism. As ghazal gave way to rubai so did realism lo abstraction. Very soon he was on top of the contemporary idiom. He tried to come up with something new in successive exhibitions. He hated repetition. He couldn't agree with the prospect of creating something a new which he had already done sometime back. It was this compulsive longing for new paths which distinguished Sadequain. But he loathed thinking of ostracizing himself from the classical tradition and that's why we find that he returned to the classical spirit in a big way towards the later part of his life.

EXOTIC GRANDEUR
The calligraphy on marble slabs exhibited last year was a remarkable announcement of the return to the exotic grandeur of oriental colors and wisdom. And strangely enough his rubaies of the last few years provide us with a foretaste of Khayyam. We see that he is no more as argumentative as Josh. He wants to impress upon us the virtue of reclining on the hard core of tradition. Nevertheless we see bright spots of light darting on our eyes from unexpected corners. The light from the unexpected quarters, he once explained, signifies that one cannot shut one's eyes to light. Sadequain had recited his latest rubaies two months before his death in a select gathering. His unpublished rubaies are in hundreds. His autobiography is not as yet complete and we would have to content ourselves with the unfinished book. It is written in a classical style. In it Sadequain appears to be one of those darweshs of Mir Aman, share their experiences lest they suffocate themselves. He has portrayed the life of backwater city in a language, which is fast dying. No other painter has perhaps ‘arrested’ the childhood atmosphere with so complete and abundance as Sadequain has done and I wish that his nephews would do something to make his rubaies and autobiography available to the students of Urdu literature.

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SADEQUAIN’S RUBAIYAT
Agha Masood Hussain

Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday only fret those who are coward. You would better call them hypocrites for they pass a dual life full of contradictions and conflicts. But strangely enough they apparently succeed and lead a 'successful' life. These handfuls of moneyed people with bulging bellies seldom fail to exploit the innocent. They snatch away the very beauty from the world that makes it so dear to live in. Our Urdu poets felt so strongly against this ruthless exploitation and hypocrisy that they unmasked it through their verses and exposed, with full force, its incongruous dualism. War against this
corruption and exploitation continues unabated. Sadequain represents this Age in this respect. He has been waging War against exploitation that manifests itself in any form through his paintings for more than two decades. He is an artist who won international recognition and secured the coveted Paris- de-Biennial in painting. On the one hand it was recognition of his fine work in the realm of art and on the other challenge for continuing his work in 'mystic figuration', a new concept evolved by Sadequain's own
Untiring efforts. In Sadequain's paintings the 'Cactus Tree' that was born in the deserts of Sindh in odd circumstances and survived against all hostile conditions is in fact a symbol of man’s struggle for existence and represents his undying spirit. Sadequain gave new meaning and significance, new depth and dimension to the language of Art through this symbol. Today prominent art connoisseurs recognize this symbol in Art and Paris- de-Biennial that Sadequain won is its irrefutable evidence.

Never the less Sadequain remained dissatisfied with his paintings that were innumerable and were manifested in lines and colors. To express himself more eloquently he chose yet another medium that could translate his feelings faithfully and interpret the world as he saw it. He started writing poetry. He did not choose the easy road to poetry but the hard one - the arduous path of Rubaiyat. Sadequain heralds his entrance through this Rubai: In all he composed 1,111 Rubaiyats, calligraphy by himself. He supervised their printing also. He would shut himself up in his own room unaware of the rising waning and waxing of the moon but would find himself with the multitude and give language to his pent up emotions through his quatrains. His Rubaiyats are a revolt against urban morality, which is the product of our typical social set-up that is undergoing rapid transition and transformation. In them Sadequain crushed into pieces the shell of false moral values. How courageously he exposes religious exploitation and the social snobs who masquerade as gentlemen.

Sadequain’s hero in poetry, like the one in his paintings, is truly bold and uncompromising. He fights for the noble principles of like till the end and never yields before the forces of brutality and reaction. He is neither aggressive nor fanatic but peace loving albeit not a pacifist. He defends the cause of truth and preserves the values enshrined in humanity.

The anti-Hero in Sadequain's poetry enjoys all privileges of the society that he gained through sheer hypocrisy and intrigues and they too at the cost of national interest. For Sadequain they are worse than Kefirs (the infidels) who only profess what they sincerely believe. However unacceptable they may be but at least they never accept the hypocritical way of life, which is inwardly full of degradation and humiliation. How feelingly Sadequain sings. Sadequain decries war and weapons. The horrors of the two world wars moved him so deeply that he does not want humanity to repeat the experience and bear the brunt of the war. Instead he favors peace through international brotherhood and understanding. His many Rubaiyat invariably carry these feelings and in fact reflect the desire of all humanity. Perhaps he is amongst the few celebrities whose reputation, both in art and literature spread so far and won such acclaim.