SRINAGAR: MF Husain’s horses meant power. Flat, bold, Cubist, built for scale like the Bollywood billboards he once painted in Mumbai. Masood Hussain’s horse is painted on Pashmina and dyed in the wool — carrying the earliest Kashmiri poetry, passed down orally for 600 years before anyone wrote it down.This is a sharp turn from familiar ground for Srinagar-based Hussain, whose work for years has chronicled Kashmir’s conflict, grief and everyday life. For the first time, he has painted Lal Vakhs — mystical four-line verses of 14th-century Kashmiri poet Lal Ded — on Pashmina shawls.Twenty shawls. Two years. “These are painted shawls based on Lal Vakhs. I selected 20 Vakhs, then I conceived them and painted them,” Hussain said Monday at an exhibition in Srinagar.Lal Ded, also known as Lalleshwari, was born near Srinagar in a Kashmiri Pandit family. Abused at her marital home, she left at 26 to become an itinerant Shaiva mystic. Muslims called her Lal Arifa. Her Vakhs — from the Sanskrit vaak, meaning “speech” or “saying” — are among the earliest compositions in Kashmiri and a foundation of its literary tradition.Hussain’s shawls give those words a visual life. One features what Hussain calls a celestial horse — a rider moving beneath a sky stitched with constellations. Other shawls turn towards Lal Ded’s references to death, spiritual passage and the unseen.The idea took root after Hussain’s collaborations with Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock, who died of cancer in April this year. Their first project marked Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. Rosenstock’s 150 minimalist haikus and tankas were paired with Hussain’s watercolours, bringing Irish culture, Kashmiri artistry and Gandhian philosophy of peace into one book.
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“I mostly painted Kashmir and its conflict. Once I collaborated with Rosenstock, a lot changed,” Hussain said. “Why not work on Kashmir Sufism, Rishi culture, syncretic culture and convert them into paintings? Why not start on Lal Ded on Pashmina? I got the idea.”Lal Ded walked barefoot, wandered, spoke in riddles. Hussain began by reading extensively about her and her poetry. “A lot has been written, but no one has given it a visual shape. I tried,” Hussain said. The medium is the message. It is an old poetry in a new skin — mysticism that can be worn.
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