A tribute

I was grieved to read of the demise of Maqbool Fida(M F) Husain, the great patron of art that India is proud to have begotten. He started gaining recognition as a painter in early 1940s. His contributions extend beyond his paintings to films like Through the Eyes of a Painter, the much talked about Gaja Gamini, and the controversial Meenakshi, the tail of three cities. He was honored with the Padma Shri(1955), Padma Bhushan(1973) and Padma Vibhushan(1991) by the Government of India. He was offered the citizenship of Quatar in 2010, which he had accepted. It is a pity that the while the artist was being acclaimed world over, he faced rejections from his own motherland, eventually ending his life in exile. He had gone on a self-imposed exile in 2006 after the cataclysm that followed the exhibition of Bharat Mata naked(depicted here).
The newspaper went beyond the news to compare him with the erstwhile artists and painters like Picasso, whose works were also controverted like that of Mr. Hussain. Both ran common on the grounds that despite being the great artists that they were, they were exiled from their respective countries for the obscenity of their arts. This link became important to the extent that despite their different styles of painting, Mr. Hussain received the appellation The Picasso of India. He had been in controversy for long for the profanity of portraying Indian deities in nudity. But like Picasso, this never deterred him from living his passions up till the end. It is easy to appreciate such acts of audacity, but to be the one who undertakes them is difficult. To pursue your dreams, your passion, without the apprehension of how well it would be taken, requires a certain amount of dedication to the cause and belief. But more than that, it is one's zeal to live for oneself, to enjoy life doing what one loves that lets one going, oblivious to such deterrents. Where decrepitude sinks into people as early as 40, this great connoisseur was busy creating art till his last.
His life motivates me to do live and celebrate my own life in a way that I can also be cherished, not in terms of the name or recognition, but in a way that when I look back, I am inspired by my own self. Given a chance to be able to relive those years, I would be privileged to live it as myself. I am reminded of the lines from a poem titled The Seven Stages by Shakespear saying
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
Yes, the death of the great artist is indeed a loss to us, but this player had played his part so well that it is a proud end, a culmination which has left many inceptions behind.