Sadequain 20 years later – Khalid Hasan

Khalid Hasan writes on the great Pakistani master, Sadequain,in the current issue of the Friday Times:

“It is 20 years this year since Sadequain’s death. He would have been 77. When he died at the age of 57 (of what can only be called too much living), it was not his death that was surprising but how he had lived so long, given the white hot intensity with which he lived and painted, wrote and loved. He burned his candle at both ends, and had there been a third end, he would have burned it from that end too.

And this great anecdote –

“…There are hundreds of Sadequain stories, but the one recounted by journalist Nasrullah Khan Aziz is characteristic. One day in Karachi, a man came up to Sadequain and said that he had a family to feed but nothing to feed it with. The only thing he knew was how to drive a rickshaw. Sadequain gave him 15 thousand rupees to buy a rickshaw, as long as he agreed to take him wherever he wanted to go. That arrangement lasted for some time, but one day, Sadequain said to him, You are free. You don’t have to drive me around anymore.

Read the full article here

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