SH Raza remembers MF Husain on his 100th birth anniversary

I left for France in 1950 but we kept in touch and wrote to each other often. In fact, in the book Geysers released by Vadehra Art Gallery, some of the letters between us have been reproduced. In the early phase of my stay in Paris, we met at times. But Husain was a roamer — he liked to walk around almost aimlessly. He would sometimes promise to come and meet me in Paris and then forget about it!

He was a prolific painter and in spite of the unfortunate phase of the last years of his glorious career and life, he was hugely popular as a painter. He painted all kinds of themes. I recall his iconic work The Spider and the Lamp (1956), also the way he painted Mother Teresa. Then the painting Zameen (1955). I have no works of Husain, but he and Bal Chhabra had jointly acquired one of my large paintings Maa Lautkar Jab Aaunga in 1980s. It is now in possession of Amrita Jhaveri in London, I understand.

I met him in New York when Saffronart mounted a retrospective of mine in 2005. In 2009, we had a joint exhibition in London. We met at the opening and decided to meet the next day as well, but he never showed up.

As told to Vandana Kalra