Woven Carpet

Mirzapur is an area in Uttar Pradesh with a high population of carpet weavers. Most of them replicate old Mughal designs, copy abstract art and old English paintings or create geometric patterns. They make tufted and knotted floor coverings and flat durries in cotton or wool. Being able to read and write Urdu, and being young and of a poetic nature, Mohammad Kalam had an advantage when given the challenge of developing calligraphy for a carpet. He was shown a small book of poems by Khalil Gibran with calligraphy by Salah Moussawy, "Amour et Femmes".

Love and women inspired Gibran’s poems. Kalam chose to be similarly inspired. He did a series of images with verses about women and their suffering when they were subjected to injustice in matrimony. In spite of the visual beauty of the work and his enthusiasm, they did not seem suitable for floor coverings.Finally, he created a design that was more mystical, though still edgy and abstract in thought. It could be interpreted in many ways. The dark chocolate-coloured carpet’s elegant calligraphy in deep maroon and ochre yellow says 'bechain shab ve sehr', meaning “restless morning and evening”. It is left to the viewer, if they so wish, to interpret, maybe by placing a semi-colon after the word “restless”.