Poem | Suneet Chopra

A Conversation With Husain

languor of an afternoon in Delhi,
lying on the side of a low table
we break bread, dip it in mincemeat curry,
with a painting still wet on an easel
in front of us, unfinished. our thoughts stray
to spaces between individuals and
forms, between life and aesthetics, bodies
and evocations of their being,
symbols and portraits; then we move to the
market, to competition, the heartburn
it brings; but he gently brushes these things
aside, for he feels he has no rivals,
no competitors apart from the passing
of time. That too is a sort of friend to
him, he tells me when we speak of how a
drawing finished in minutes fetches
such a high price, how “each moment of my
seventy five years of life is in it,
so the price they pay is for that”. now we
see how time spent in creating works of
beauty grows on an artist while it
merely passes for those of us who just
wash themselves in it and let their bodies dry.