Horses reined in, Husain rushes out mythological elephant

ROHIT BANSAL

NEW DELHI, JULY 23: WHAT happened to M.F. Husain’s horses specially painted for visiting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf? Well, the blessed steeds have failed to adorn the walls of Army House, the General’s fortress in Islamabad. Instead, they have bolted to Hyderabad.

The Husain painting, commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and widely reprinted in the media as ‘‘a gift of peace’’ from Prime Minister Vajpayee to General Musharraf was seen by some as a trifle hot and ‘‘with no novelty element left’’. At first, some ‘‘zero risk taking types’’ in the PMO suggested to Husain to make a few changes, but the artist preferred to do something de noveau instead.

Husain had originally drawn a set of Ashvamedha horses and a dove, signifying peace, and had then scrawled a passage, Eru Fil Erd, from the Quran. But some decision makers may not have found it to their liking due to, as Husain joked, his Arabic handwriting.

The painter good humouredly confessed that a few days before Musharraf’s visit he was politely asked whether the Arabic message was central to his painting. He explained the artistic merit of his work, but ‘‘it was agreed that since there is no surprise element in my painting, and now that the media has printed lifts from my rough sketch, it will be difficult to justify such a gift to a visiting President’’.

The communication was obviously handed by PMO with dexterity, because the mercurial octogenarian neither blew up nor made an issue. Instead, as he told The Indian Express, he packed off the horses to his personal museum in Hyderabad, and sat down to create, what he calls, ‘‘something new that will create zero confusion’’.

The result was a two-headed version of Erawat, as per Hindu mythology the white elephant of God Indra, with a lotus in one trunk and a rose in the other. ‘‘I enjoyed (seeing) the result...a very bright Rajasthani feel and lots of colours and a peacock too,’’ Husain said. The painting was not handed over to General Musharraf by hand, but as a PM aide put it, ‘‘sent in a pack alongwith other things, as the practice is with all such gifts’’.