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It has been a busy week for artist Maqbool Fida Husain.
His work had just been auctioned at record prices. Hundreds of acolytes lined up on the sidewalk outside TamarindArt Gallery, hoping to catch a glimpse of the white-haired artist.
New York witnessed the artist creating his hugest painting ever, 45 feet by 11 feet in size.
When he wasn't holding off crowds, he was running around town in his chauffeur-driven black Mercedes, shopping for shoes for his daughter, Faiza.
The event began, most auspiciously, with a crescent moon. No, not quite, it was a mitten. Yes, the Artist was painting a big black mitten.
The photographers in the gallery moved in, hoping to capture the tiniest, most pregnant detail. Actually, it wasn't really a mitten after all. It was the Indian subcontinent, but skinnier, and with an ear and what looked like the ridge of a nose.
Boom: The music-- Beethoven?-- crested, most ominously. The crowd leaned this way and that, craning, squinting, interpreting. The owner of the gallery, tall, nattily dressed, motioned angrily at photographers, but no one seemed to notice.
The painting by now had acquired some form: A faceless old Muslim man, with an umbrella at his side, a table in the foreground, on which a vase stood. And an open book-- so blank, so very blank. The music stopped. The artist stood up.
The music started again. Beethoven's 9th, most definitely. The artist, seated once again, rolling back and forth in front of the wall, nodded his head to the tune and waved his paintbrush, as if conducting a symphony. A little more shadow here, another brushstroke there. The artist appraised his work, re-appraised.
Twenty minutes after beginning, he was done. He turned around and smiled. The crowd roared.
Photograph: Paresh Gandhi. Text: Arun Venugopal