So much beauty, aesthetics, culture and tradition in the narrow lanes of Pakistan Chowk is hard to imagine, I thought as stepped into Mohammed Iftikhar’s shop. After meeting this calligrapher with over 30 years of experience, I realised that the profession that we choose definitely influences our personality. Mohammed Iftikhar is polite, soft spoken, a thorough gentleman and so much in tune with his profession that it is difficult to imagine him doing anything else.

“I have been interested in calligraphy or khattati since childhood. It took me four to five years of painstaking hard work to learn this art from Hazrat Nafees Shah Sahib who lived in Lahore. Progress was slow and I had to work with great concentration because not only is each alphabet made beautifully but also has to be accurately sized and proportioned.”

With this, he showed me a book that details the exact proportions and formations of the different letters of the Urdu alphabet. For art as beautiful as a haunting melody drifting through quiet woods, there must also be some precious tools. “Previously, pens that were numbered according to the thickness of their nibs used to come from England but they are no longer available. This makes it increasingly difficult for us. The ones with broader nibs (sarkande ka qalam or reed pen) come from Punjab. The ink we use comes from Germany,” he adds softly.

With computers and desktop printing coming in, calligraphists are forced to find new ways of making a living

Calligraphy is a centuries-old art, and is defined as decorative or ornamental handwriting. The word calligraphy is taken from the Greek word ‘kalli’ meaning beautiful and ‘graphia’ meaning ‘to write’. The Quran itself mentions the pen —‘qalam’ and Muslims have deemed calligraphy as the noblest of arts. The dome, ceiling, walls, pillars on both the interior and exterior of a number of shrines, mosques, monuments and buildings based on Muslim architecture have been thus adorned. Calligraphists in the early Islamic period regularly used rectilinear styles to transcribe manuscripts of the Quran. Since calligraphy is ornamental writing, it is present in all languages and extremely popular in the Muslim world.

However, as with the passage of time paper was favoured over barks and animal skin, so with improved technology and the increased use of computers in all professions, the popularity of the calligraphists has decreased.

“When I began working, there were around 15 to 20 calligraphists in this area, however, now I am the only one left. At that time my day used to begin at 7am and I would leave my shop by midnight, but now there is not much work. People sometimes come to me to get posters, pamphlets, wedding and visiting cards written but now they can get this done on the computer, which costs much less both in terms of time and money, and mistakes can be instantly rectified; plus there is also the option of taking out as many copies as required at the click of a button,” says Iftikhar. Coincidently, he shares a shop with a man who mostly does Urdu composing of books, wedding cards, etc. on InPage software.

Mubashir Alam, another calligraphist who has been in the profession for 25 years, has his shop in one of the lanes in the Eidgah area. “I used to have a bigger shop on the main road but now I have moved here. My work has decreased by 50pc because the same work can easily be done on the computer, yet I am satisfied with what I get. It is difficult to survive; however, things have become expensive for everyone. These days there’s not much work in English unlike other languages, because a number of fonts are available on computer. People mostly come to get wedding cards and envelopes written, while a number of people want ayats written which they later get framed. Then there are those who want posters, magazine headings as well as the names of dramas and their cast which appear when a play is telecast. They value calligraphy and are not willing to compromise on the styles, many of which are not available on the computer.

Mubashir Alam has written the Ayat al Kursi and Surah-i-Yaseen for Baba Alam Shah Bukhari’s mazaar on Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road. Saying this, he takes out two very beautifully written scripts. “These are copies of the inscription on the chandeliers of one of the shrines in Iraq. I was asked to make a similar copy for the Ancholi Imambargah.”

A very old and beautiful tradition is to get the sehra (a poem recited at a nikah) and shajra (family tree) written. While the former is written at the time of marriage the latter can be written anytime. The sehra has both praise of the groom and prayers for a long and happy married life, along with duas from the family elders in poetic form. These are usually preserved as wedding mementoes and are sometimes even framed to adorn walls.

Mubashir Alam shows me a beautifully written sehra decorated with flowers. “The amount I charge for writing a sehra depends on the matter and the size of paper.”

The most commonly used style used for writing the perso-Arabic script is the ‘Nastaleeq’; it is being used for hundreds of years as the predominant style in Persian calligraphy, as well as for Arabic text. Naskh, Kufi, Riqa are the other popular styles used for forming the Urdu, Persian and Arabic alphabets.

Looking at the beautiful calligraphy, one cannot but be filled with wonder and admiration not only for its perfection and neatness but also for the painstaking and tremendous effort which has gone into producing such a marvellous masterpiece. Each alphabet flows as beautifully and naturally as the waves of the ocean forming artistic crests and troughs. Art speaks of the beauty hidden in the deepest depths of the human soul. We are indeed lucky to be a part of such a time to witness this art before it fades into history.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, March 6th, 2016