Endless rambling

A single line of Urdu script runs across the wall at nearly eight feet. The sentence — Chashma itna saaf na kar ke tujhe haqiqat nazar aa jaye aur tujhe neend na aaye aur bandar muskuraye — is not a poem in any conventional sense. It is closer to something that got stuck in a head and refused to leave. The kind of phrase that makes no profound claim, that rhymes almost accidentally, that you did not choose to remember but cannot shake. When it finally comes out, it comes out like this: all at once, unbroken, slightly absurd.

The script is written in Nastaliq but takes its form from Khat-e-Musalsal — a continuous script from the Islamic calligraphic tradition, where letters connect without lifting the hand, designed for phrases that must flow without interruption. Here that tradition is borrowed not for sacred text or decorative purpose, but for an endless ramble. The words have no spaces between them. There is no pause, no breath, no place where the sentence agrees to stop. It simply keeps going — the way certain thoughts do, the way certain lines do, the way the poet in this exhibition does, even when he has nothing left to say.

Endless rambling | Acrylics on wood | 94 x 12 inches | 2018