The Spirited Calligrapher
Ink and Dreams
In the depth of Hyderabad, where the noise of the road meets the spice fragrance, lived a colorful young calligrapher, Hassan. At twenty-two, he owned one of the most versatile artistic skills for giving meaning to parchment and intertwining ancient and modern scriptures which his unique strokes reflected.
As a member of a well-known family of textile merchants, Hassan surprised everyone with his extreme passion for calligraphy. Exceedingly devoted and practical parents who tried to prevent Hassan from being a starving artist considered quitting the art and entering his father’s business. Anyway, Hassan knew where his bread was buttered, as his ink-stained parchment meant everything to him – it was his haven, beyond the world’s stormy climes.
Each day, he would slip into a studio, a modest hidden in a labyrinth of the city, where the incense and the sounds of the city would send a chaotic harmony through his ears. By beating his heart with determination and marking the blank canvas with every writing stroke, even long hours of toil turned into a joyous expression of his love for the forbidden hobby.
The neighbors would not miss a chance to stick their heads through the door at something they believed to the demonic happening. Their common talk was that the black sheep there was some weird young man, who instead of engaging in transgressions got himself huddled up over a parchment book. Recognizing alternately that the whole world was limited by the four walls that he called a studio and that every circle of painted terra was its universe, he pursued his dreams.
Nevertheless, Hassan saw the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months as a blind flurry of troubles in his mind. The besetting problem, however of a society giving a premium to tradition above innovations, how might he ever make a mark? It all terminated with a particular incident when a terrible mist came right to him. It was an instant when the man observed that everything he believed in and relied so firmly on could all be taken away from him in a moment.
A small mob of ignorant and mean people, driven by nothing else than vandals’ sentiments, decided to enter his studio and destroy something valuable. They carved on his masterpiece, disturbed his tools, and set his beloved workshop into the flames so that all of his love and all of his sweat were reduced to nothing in a single night. Hassan showed up only to immobilize his eyes with what had just happened- the blazing fire had reduced his life's work into the fragments of the wishes, which he envisioned a while back, to nothing but a few licks of flame.
In the wake of this destruction, Hassan’s studio was transformed into a battered area with the remains of vibrant artwork and a soul engulfed in the thick fog of jealousy. A lifetime of artistic endeavors, which once sparked a vivid flame, now faded like the last ember expiring in the devastated desolation of a broken spirit.
As such, through the crossroads of the metropolis of Hyderabad, the invigorated calligrapher underneath the humble trapeze was striving for the opposition of tradition and the triumph of his heart, and his art became the symbol of power and courage of the human ego. Yet, in the final analysis, it wasn’t society’s apathy that finally killed his sparkle but the pitiless fun of destiny that wiped out his dreams forever before they could early turn into reality.
