Sreelakshmi Prakash

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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Colourful papers, wedding cards and posters are
fastened with pins to a rope stretched across Mohammed Ghouseuddin Azeem’s
shop. He uses a a qalam (pen) made of dried reed to write Allah in Urdu
at the top of a white sheet of paper. He does this before anything else. “I
have been a calligrapher for over 28 years. I mastered the art in Saudi Arabia
while working there. When I came back to India in 1996, I opened up this shop,”
he says.  

Azeem, 44, lives in the centre of Hyderabad, and his
shop is in Jamal Market, a three-story building in Chatta Bazaar near Charminar.
It’s one of the oldest markets in the city, a hub of printing shops known for
the distinctive centuries-old khattati (Urdu
and Arabic calligraphy) practised here.Khattati dates
back to the time of the Qutb Shahi kings (1518-1687) in the Deccan. Historically,
its practitioners (called khattats or kaatibs) are said to have etched the
Quran in Arabic and Urdu. Some of these handwritten Qurans are in museums in
and around Hyderabad. Khattati can
also be seen on monuments in the city built during the reign of the Qutb Shahi dynasty.
People now seek out Urdu calligraphy or khush khat (good handwriting) mainly on special occasions and come to
Chatta Bazaar in search of the master calligraphers. Urdu schools
and madrassas also sometimes come here for designs for their logos. 



Despite the activity
around Azeem – workers shuffling papers, customers yelling, printing presses
whirring – he works silently. “I call myself a practitioner of the art, though people call me a master calligrapher,”
he says. “Khattati is all
about grammar. Every font, each alphabet has a grammar – the height, width,
depth and spacing of every dot matters. The beauty of the letter depends solely
on how you rotate the pen without compromising on the grammar. It is all about
fine, deft hand movements.”

Azeem, like
other kaatibs at Chatta Bazaar, works
for eight hours a day, six days a week “There are around 213 khattati fonts in Arabic. It will take at
least 30 years to learn all of them and a lifetime to practise it to
perfection,&quot; he says. &quot;Even if you spend an entire lifetime on this art, it will be less.” 

The
calligraphers usually charge around Rs. 200-300 for a one-page design
for a wedding invitation, which they make swiftly in around 45 minutes. Customers
then make copies of this design at a printing press nearby.  With barely 10 kaatibs remaining in the
Old City (according to their own estimates), on busy days, each one can get up
to 10 design jobs. 

Many, like Afzal Muhamad Khan, 53, who lives in Ghanzi Bazaar
near Charminar, gave up this work in the 1990s. “My father Ghouse Mohammed Khan
was a master calligrapher in his time,” he says. “He used to teach hundreds of
students at Idara-e-Adabiyat-e-Urdu [a calligraphy training centre in the Panjagutta
area of Hyderabad city]. We used to work together at Siasat [an Urdu daily]. But when the computers came, I lost
my job and I started working in advertising. This art will be dead in a few
years. We are the last line [of practitioners],” he says with a resigned look.

By the mid-1990s, Urdu fonts became computerised and customers started to turn to digital printing. As a result, the demand for calligraphers fell steeply. Newspapers like Siasat went digital too and retained only one or two calligraphers to write some of their headlines. The others lost their jobs, and a few opened small shops in Chatta Bazaar and started doing calligraphy on wedding cards, logos, posters and signboards. The calligraphers say that with little government support
to preserve this art form, khattati is in a dismal state and in danger of vanishing. Besides,
not many young people are interested – the few who study it usually give up
because of the effort calligraphy demands, while others see it as a waste of
time with a bleak future. 

But Muhammad
Faheem and Zainul Abedin, both in their late 30s, are exceptions. Their father Muhammad
Nayeem Saberi, who passed away in 2018, was an expert calligraphist, and among the
first to use multiple colours in Urdu and Arabic calligraphy, his sons and others
at Chatta Bazaar tell me. He set up the shop that the sons run now – and
besides Urdu and Arabic, they excel in calligraphy in English too. The brothers
have overseas clients to, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other
countries, for whom they make, on occasion, large frames with Urdu calligraphy.

As the work day nears an end at Chatta Bazaar, the
calligraphers arrange their qalams (pens) neatly,
put their ink boxes away and offer namaz
before going home. When I ask Azeem if the art will disappear soon, he responds
with alarm. “Don’t say that! Till our last breath, we will struggle
but keep this going.” Pasted on the wall in his shop, a clipping in an English
newspaper of an article on him is worn out and fading, perhaps like his art.

A version of this article was published in ‘UOH Dispatch’,
a University of Hyderabad journal, in April 2019.

The Urdu calligraphers of Chatta Bazaar

চট্টা বাজারের উর্দু লিপিকরদের কথা

చట్ట బజారులోని ఉర్దూ కాలీగ్రాఫర్లు

சட்டா பஜாரின் சித்திர எழுத்துக் கலைஞர்கள்

চাট্টা বজাৰৰ উৰ্দু হস্তলিপি শিল্পীসকল

छत्ता बाज़ार के उर्दू ख़त्तात

چھتّہ بازار کے اردو خطّاط

छत्ता बाजारातील उर्दू कातीब

ଛତ୍ତା ବଜାରର ଉର୍ଦ୍ଦୁ ହସ୍ତଲିଖନ ବିଦ୍ୟା ବିଶାରଦ

chatta bazaar

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The Urdu calligraphers of Chatta Bazaar

Only a few calligraphers remain in Hyderabad, working on wedding invitations, logos and signboards, while many others have been edged out by computerised fonts, digital printing and a lack of state support

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