Since the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, every friend here in Delhi is Googling about Abbottabad. Where is this city? Is it near Islamabad? Near Lahore? Is it named after some Pathan feudal lord? Is it really named after some English man? At the time of writing this piece, it’s not even 24 hours when Osama was killed but thanks to the continuous TV tickers and the constant chatter of people around me, it appears that Osama has been dead since weeks, if not months. And yes, the wedding of Prince William with Kate Middleton now appears to have happened before the Partition! Such is the effect of non-stop news cycles. What had happened yesterday is already stale. What had happened the day before yesterday could as well have take place in our great-grandparents’ time. I wonder what will be the big news about tomorrow.
Readers, I want to talk about the big news that happened when Mr Jinnah was still a baby. Ok, I’m joking. It happened two weeks ago. My neighbour got a Pulitzer Prize. I’m talking about Siddhartha Mukherjee, whose book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, was described by the prize committee as “an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science.” Now an American citizen, Mukherjee hails from Delhi. His parents live in Safdarjang Enclave, just across the lake from my home in Hauz Khas Village. After Delhi dailies went berserk about ‘our boy’ winning the Pulitzer, I purchased the hardbound from a Khan Market store. Though sprinkled with medical descriptions, the book was readable, sensitive and intelligent. Curiously, the day I reached its final chapter, I stumbled into a cancer patient in my neighborhood.
In this week when everyone is celebrating death – even if it is the death of a horrible man, it is still a death – I will tell you about somebody who has inched closer to death but still have a zest for life.
It was mid-morning but it didn’t matter to her. “Time doesn’t exist in my life,” said painter Usha Hooda as she dabbed her brush in a heap of burnt sienna. “I’m 54 but I’m not bothered. If you start believing that you could do only this at this age, that’s the end. You can’t limit yourself, especially for someone in my situation. I’ve cancer.”
I was meeting Hooda at her second-floor studio in Hauz Khas Village. It’s a neighbourhood in upscale south Delhi that is home to ruins, curio shops, cafes, art galleries and artists. Commissioned by a collector, Hooda was painting buzkashi horse riders of Afghanistan with a controlled recklessness. Nimbly moving her brush across the canvas – drawing a stroke, making a stabbing motion – she had a personality to match. Her figure was lean, her voice was sharp and her hair was cropped. As a passionate Enfield bike-rider, her tips were alarming. “Everyone must ride a bike once in a lifetime to feel real freedom,” she said while giving the finishing stroke to a horse’s chest. “Of course, it should be done without a helmet.”
Blunt in her opinions, the painter said that she focuses on people. “I draw real people, who are not affected by the society’s pretensions.” Such a specie is tough to find in Delhi at least. Hooda searches for them by trekking in the higher reaches of Himalayas in Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh. “I also love the sea. My son… he’s a free soul. He lives in the Andaman Island.”
Born in Hissar, Haryana, Hooda grew up in Chandigarh. Since her husband was working with Air India, she lived in Tehran, Sydney, Tokyo and Paris. “Tehran was most fascinating. Iranians have amazingly medieval features, with a strange mix of savagery and style.” The cell phone rang. Hooda talked while continuing with the canvas. “Hmmm… the doctor has to look at my CAT scan… hopefully, I won’t need a surgery…”
After putting the phone on her wooden palette, Hooda kneeled back and examined the work-in-progress. Suddenly she said, “But why talk to me? I’m not a genuine artist. I don’t belong to the art fraternity. I’ve never been to an art school. I never had a godfather. I don’t have ‘x’ number of exhibitions.” She got up and laid down on the Afghani kilim and snuggled to Maya, the nine-year-old rottweiler.
The room was filled with calming electronic tunes of the Swedish group Solar Fields. “It’s my favorite music. It’s pure feeling.” The studio had a dining table with a rough surface, a four-poster bed and a few settees. In this eclectic room, there was also a piano, a guitar, a tabla set and a few of Hooda’s paintings. From a distance, the window showed nothing but trees.
Getting back to her canvas, Hooda said, “I don’t care what people purchase, especially those who consult curators and art critics. If you don’t buy what your eyes love, you should hang yourself.”
Many paintings of Hooda are female nudes; some are striking for their directness. An outstanding work is of a young, flamboyant woman with a hibiscus flower in her hair. “My attachment to a painting ends once I finish it,” she said. Hooda was planning to leave for Goa the next day. “The cancer was diagnosed three years ago. I could just live on.” Today as you are reading this, she must be somewhere in a remote beach in Goa, away from the news tickers of Osama, Obama and Abbottabad, searching for real people, cancer or no cancer.
Mayank Austen Soofi lives in a library. He has one website (The Delhi Walla) and four blogs. The website address: thedelhiwalla.com. The blogs: Pakistan Paindabad, Ruined By Reading, Reading Arundhati Roy and Mayank Austen Soofi Photos.
