A GREAT CANDLE GOES OUT

“Shall I do my story on you?” I kept on repeating to Qayyum Chowdhury, on the phone. He had come on Abul Khair's arms to Subir Chowdhury's body laying out in Bengal Foundation.

When I last saw him at Maasranga TV, he had answered the question so deftly. One knew he had a pacemaker. That is why he was not allowed to travel to Australia to be with Subir.

I'd seen him smiling in newspapers at receptions. I chided him often on the phone, saying “I've seen your picture at this opening or that. Why don't you do my 'Yes or No' questions?” He would merely laugh repeatedly and assure me that it would be done some time.

It was sweet of him to say that his wife felt honoured by my write-up of her painting on a piece on Old Dhaka. “Aren't you Zahid's sister?” his wife asked with a bright laugh at a Bengal dinner, while she embraced me.

He had, as if to say, risen from the dead at Bengal Foundation, and spoken with such feeling and emotion at Subir Chowdhury's funeral, along with Rafiqun Nabi, recalling their stay at Melbourne and Canberra, along with artists like Kanak Chapa Chakma and Ranjit Das.

He always spoke like a trained orator, at all functions, like he was at Shafiuddin Ahmed's last birthday. His words always carried weight. He dwelt on the deeds of the artists living or dead in such a fitting manner and with such depth it was indeed a delight to hear him speak.

I remember going to his house to interview him. This was ages back. The memory is a wonderful one, though the years block the details. Once, returning from an interview with him, he took my side so warmly, as if he knew me all my life.

“I don't believe it!” I had exclaimed about the passing away of the two other very dear people in my life. Choked tears were not enough to show that the world was empty with him.

“He is so lucky. Even a line by him means so much and sells at such a price.” I was grumbling to friends at the Bengal Foundation reception. Friends of mine, like Ahmed Nazir, only blurted out a few facts about his laying out and the funeral on the telephone.

In his creative world, Qayyum enriched Bangladesh by his representation of faces, rives and landscapes. We are grateful to his creative ability and artistic magnificence. His passions, colours, lines and metaphors brought life to his art. He immersed himself in the thousand traditions of folk art. His style was full of balanced rhythms. His experiment with colours and forms created much of his work.  

He was born in Noakhali in 1934. Breaking down figures into geometrical shape was his favourite pastime. With Qayyum, Zainul Abedin formed the Art Institute at Segunbagicha. His Kalighat Patas expressed his boldness. He was the premier designer of books for the country. He had left Art College – where classmates included Murtaja Baseer, Rashid Chowdhury and Abdur Razzaque -- to join Design Centre. His boats, trees, long-tailed birds, stylized sun and boats covered his work with ease. Deep green and blue were unusual. He worked from close observation and his uniqueness came from his appreciation of life and Nature. His simplicity of life etched his personality into our memory. If anyone understood Cubism, he did. He created beauty from familiar landscapes of Bengal with the bathing women, and bushes and trees and skies full of birds. His designs and motifs had a life of their own.