Between bindus, a life

Sayed Haider Raza, the most recent volume on the artist, commemorates his birth centenary and chronicles his life through his art

- SUSAMMA JOY KURIAN

A big, black dot on a white wall of his school became his mind’s anchor.

Sayed Haider Raza had a wanderer’s soul since childhood; his mind never stayed put. For that matter, neither did his feet—it took him places, from the Gond forest in Madhya Pradesh to Gorbio in France and back to India. But his primary schoolteacher, Nandlalji Jharia, just wanted to momentarily still his mind and instil focus. And, that is why he drew that black dot on the wall. Raza was all of eight and the true meaning of that dot was lost on him then. But it always came back to him, when he was in what was then Bombay (his J.J. School of Arts days) and later during his sojourn in France. It finally broke free from his mind’s cage and landed onto his canvas in the form of ‘Bindu’—his leitmotif or as Raza called it “the very backbone supporting my body of work”. After his return to India—he lived in New Delhi—his work was largely about variations of ‘Bindu’. Life and, perhaps, his work had come full circle.