How an artist was shorn

by Salil Tripathi, 04 Mar 2010, MINT.

This is no longer about Hussain. How would Rabindranath Tagore write that peom today?

"Where the mind is filled with fear and the head is kept low

Where vandals are free

Where the world is broken into fragments of narrow domestic walls

Where the clear stream of reason has lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where tireless striving stretching its arms towards perfection faces obstruction

Inrto that hell of serfdom, my country lies: we hold the wake."