The walls are covered with paintings - contemporary and old. Tables are artistically strewn with artifacts and antiquities. Kahini Arte Merchant, dark-haired and attractive, wearing old tribal silver jewellery, fits perfectly into the assemblage. Interestingly, despite being an artist of repute, none of the paintings are of her own creation, with the sole exception of `Show Window 79' which has a lady looking on at a show window with a mannequin's foot in her hand. Her husband, Minaz had bought this for himself from an exhibition.Over the years, Kahini's acquisitions have ranged from contemporary art to old Indian paintings, old icons, Dutch and Turkish wall plates known as "spongeware", tribal stone sculpture from the jungles of Madhya Pradesh, very old books, urns and jars as well as quaint antique containers for preserves, Picasso-like contemporary ceramic vases, jugs and plates. Yet, in spite of this clutter of curios, she does not think of herself a collector. Never has and never will. "It's justthat I like to be surrounded by things of beauty that excite me."Kahini's paintings have been acquired with much feeling and she has used her wall space almost completely for the display of art. Her collection includes a 1980 Bendre of a woman doing rangoli, paintings by Anupam Sud, Antonio E Costa, Shrinivaschari, Ingle, Fornasetti, an Avijit Roy framed unusually inside an altar on the wall. She has a Husain as well - one of his better works depicting a horse and the Lord Ganesha, though she is not very partial to his work - "he is too prolific". In her large collection, a pair of Baiju Parthan paintings hold a special place in her heart. These acrylic paintings with computer imagery not only delight her visually, but have an added significance as the artist is someone she is very fond of. "Baiju is very consistent, he uses a lot of symbols and metaphors, sometimes he writes things in bubbles, he is a gentle soul and very self effacing. There is a similarity in our symbolism which must also hold anaffinity for me."One of the works `Magic and Chaos' depicts an abacus and a fish, the other unnamed work is of a bird and a human face in dark earth colours. Another favourite piece is a very Zen-like charcoal sketch of a nude man gifted to her by Satish Gupta. The work is a sketch from his unpublished book The Eagle and The Monk, which she greatly enjoyed. "It is as good as Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet." It hangs in her bedroom so that she can view it often. Among his works, she is more fond of the simple meaningful work as opposed to the traditional Rajasthani women he had done earlier. "I believe that a painter is very important to a work his life, the history of the work, all add to its interest for me and that is what makes me partial to one work and indifferent to another."- NISHA JAMWAL
