30/03/2018

Stood in the central hall of Maulana Azad Library of AMU taking a good look at this portrait of a man I had only heard of. There were many other men, present as portraits, who appeared as though urging one to see not just inward but gaze out – hard, strong and assertively, at the world and leave it a little better than how one found it.

Majaz started the journal ‘Naya Adab’ and was one of the founders of Progressive Writers’ Movement. A while later, library’s security guard joined in, and looked up the walls to see these portraits with exclusive attention, the same portraits underneath which he sits on his watch duty everyday. The moment of pausing to take a look at the portraits and ponder briefly about the lives frozen as faces on the walls united the visitor and the resident.