COLOUR OF MUSIC

# 626, Oil on canvas, 42 x 30 inches, Early 1970s

I met Shaikh Yousuf Ali for the first time in the late 1970s, through a common friend by the name of Tek Mirchandani, who was working for Larsen & Toubro and also assisting them with their art collection. Tek strongly recommended the artist saying that "Yousuf's works have a lot of strength - in both, form and colour" and that I should consider them for my collection. Despite the preconditioning with which I met Yousuf, I was amazed to see his paintings. Not only that, we became good friends, having common interests, like Urdu poetry, classical Indian music and ghazals. Rarely has any artist, or any individual for that matter, created such an impact on me, in the first couple of encounters.

Being in the textile industry, we had a lot of designers coming from far off lands to design our textiles - in which the colour content and design was of great importance. I would explain to him how it took us a couple of days to mix a palette of 6 or 7 colours, since we had to test the blend of each new colour with all the colours already selected. Yet at the same time, I would be amazed with the dexterity at which he would mix so many colours in his works on paper.

When my son was to be married in 1994, my wife requested him to make a little motif for the wedding card. In a couple of days, he brought back a wonderful painting, where a man is playing the shehnai and Lord Ganesha is dancing to the music. All of us liked the painting so much that we immediately decided to use it for the wedding card and it was very much appreciated - both in India and abroad.

In the mid-1980s, I decided to learn classical music and Yousuf was very happy about it. We used to have a few musical sessions at home - classical or ghazals - which we both enjoyed very much. His favourite ghazal singer was Mehdi Hasan, especially the ghazal of "Mir Taqi Mir, dekh to dil ke jaan se uthta hai, yeh dhuan sa kahaan se uthta hai". He always desired to make a painting on this poetry, but unfortunately it never happened.

# 625, Oil on canvas, 30 x 60 inches, 1976

His love for art manifested in many ways - he also had a passion for seeing every show at Jehangir Art Gallery. But somehow he could not come about to planning his own show there - that was largely because he had an open invitation from the Taj Gallery, where he displayed nearly a dozen times and his works would often get sold during (or even before) these shows, thereby not leaving enough inventory to plan a show at Jehangir.

In the late 1980s, he was approached by a couple of art gallery owners and dealers, who expressed a great deal of keenness in promoting him. He kept postponing any association with them, since he rarely had enough work left with him. Besides, he got sick sometime in the mid 1990s and that slowed him down, just when the art market started looking up significantly.
His death has not only been a loss to the art world, but the loss of a very personal and dear friend. May his soul rest in peace.