He sits engrossed on a rickety bench,unmindful of the traffic and crowd that pass through this narrow road towards the Jama Masjid. His client,a foreign tourist,watches him with rapt attention on the opposite bench. With practised ease,Ali Mohammad Yaqub uses his kalam (reed pen) and siyahi (ink) to design khattati (Urdu calligraphy). Soon he is ready. The small paper has an ornate Arabic script. His client satisfied,hands him the price. Theres an additional charge for the Zauq couplet that Yaqub has recorded for him. Nothing is free. I have mouths to feed, he tells the tourist in Urdu. Turning towards his acquaintance who has stopped by to say adab,he says,For an Indian this work is for Rs 100,but double the amount if the customer is a saheb. I have no choice but to over-charge. In his 70s,Yaqub has been a calligraphist for more than 45 years. He is not very keen to tell you his story. The TV wallahs come here to make documentaries,sell it to foreign channels at a price; we get nothing out of it. Everything has a price. After all,I am a poor man practising a dying art, he says. Delhi has only last month witnessed an international exhibition of calligraphy. But in the bylanes of the old city,away from seminars on various schools of art and ways of reviving these,the remaining few traditional calligraphists are struggling to make both ends meet. And so,be it reciting Urdu couplets or showing you some of his work,Yaqub demands money for ithe is naïve to quote a lakh but comes down to a hundred,and if nothing comes out of the bargain,at least a job for his nephew. A little coaxing,he finally gives in. There are numerous designs like Asloob,Tughra,Suls,Aseer,Gulzar,etc. The styles are basically threeArabic,Persian and Kufic. As a young man I learnt it all at the Darool-ulum Deoband, he says. Hailing originally from Uttar Pradeshs Muzaffarnagar,he had come to Delhi as a boy and decided to stay back. It was a beautiful city back then, he says. Every morning,he leaves his home in South Delhis Zakir Nagar and reaches Jama Masjid at around 8:30 am. He goes back home at 8:30 in the evening. Yaqub sits outside one of the book shops outside the Jama Masjid,waiting for an odd customer or tourists who would want to buy a piece of his art. There are days and even weeks when no one turns up. And no,he hasnt heard of any calligraphy exhibition. There was a time when I designed books,worked for Urdu newspapers. But the computer has ensured that we are out of job. No one has bothered to find out how people like me,who know just this craft,manage their daily needs, he says. Almost in the same breath he boasts of knowing 28 art forms and to prove his point starts singing something he claims to have composed himself. And to impress his audience further,Yaqub mimics his friend sitting outside the adjacent shop. I tried teaching calligraphy,but wasnt successful. I cant speak English to teach art school students and those who seemed interested in learning it had no clue about Urdu. Besides,it takes years of practice and patience to master this art form, he says. His story almost over,he comes back to the point: I need money to survive. Can you help?
