Artist Sadequain and Muhammad Ali Jinnah parallel

Their works in progress.

Few days back I saw reminiscence of two people, who had left a print behind with their works,their lives, their buildings and their places. Sadequain’s roof painting is at full glory at Frere hall – the hall which was built complete in 1865, standing in Karachi, designed by architect Henry Willis.

I saw Sadequain’s work, this gigantic mural on the ceiling of Frere Hall is called al-ardh-o-wsamawat which took me a good 5 minutes to encompass with my eyes and good 30 minutes to absorb some of it.

Sadequain was a prolific Artist recognized internationally as a muralist, he visited Europe and painted over 15,000 art pieces in his lifetime, many of these are unknown to its whereabouts but some are in public sites, private collections, Universities, government buildings, banks and more.

Sadequain painted much of the ceiling but a quarter of it is still unpainted He painted this much in 6 months – his last 6 months. He passed away before completing it.

While I pondered over how he had been living those months painting the mural with his student Anwar in-residence at the hall. I was awe struck.

Later when I visited Mohatta palace — the palace where Fatima Jinnah lived and died after partition of Pakistan, Which is now converted into a museum that holds Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s political life in a sequence of 200 pictures, all taken by his personal photographer Ziauddin Burni. These pictures showed Qaid e azam from his educational years to first political presence to presenting the desire for pakistan and to achieving it, then ultimately his funeral pictures were hung in the last room.

Coming back from there, it occurred to me that a parallel can be drawn between these two people, these legendary two people, I saw Sadequain’s roof painting incomplete because he died before painting the last quarter/ he left before reaching the complete piece/ he worked himself to death/

Muhammad Ali Jinnah – qaid e azam also died just after achieving Pakistan, he too left soon before seeing the country in her years of life/he too worked hard enough even at the risk of his own life/

This may be apparent and obvious but it occurred to me at that time and setting which made the thought unusual I think about these two people and their lives could not be more different and alien from each other but there’s still the similarity of an untimely death, a work in progress , I resist the urge to write ‘you know’ because we all do know When is death ever on time? it’s always a sudden change.