MULTIFACETED artists are not confined to the pages of history books. Adil Mansuri, a renowned Indian playwright, artist, calligrapher and poet who wrote in Urdu and Gujarati, passed away at the age of 72 in New Jersey last week. He has several books to his credit and had won many prestigious awards in India and abroad. In one of his writings he talks about his artistic quest, “I am curious about shapes, colors, forms, light, horizon, time, languages, scripts, and everyday I move ahead into curiosity, my endless journey.” Born in 1936 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, Gujarati was his native language and mother tongue. In 1947, after the partition of the Indian subcontinent, Mansuri's family moved to Karachi, Pakistan. He began attending school in Karachi and learned a new language, Urdu. In 1952, his father's teacher, Syed Abdullah Ba'Faqih visited them in Karachi and stayed with them. It was at this time that he learned Arabic Calligraphy from him . He began writing poems, especially Urdu ghazals in Pakistan. In 1955, having suffered a stroke and a heart attack, his father returned to India and struggled to resettle in his native land. After the family returned to India, Adil continued writing, poems and plays – this time in Gujarati. He published several collections of his Gujarati and Urdu poetry, that were well received and he won several prestigious awards. Around the same time, he worked with famous Indian artists and was inspired to experiment with art and oil paintings on canvas. This led to solo shows at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai and Sansakar Kendra in Ahmedabad, sponsored by Sarabhai's Darpan Academy. Mansuri is the pioneer of the modern Gujarati ghazal and made it an integral part of mainstream Gujarati literature. In Urdu, he is famous for his unconventional ghazals. Mansuri migrated to the US in 1985 and settled in New Jersey. During the last two decades he participated in many seminars and poetry recital programs (mushaira) across USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Middle East, and India and developed an interest in creating digital art. He devoted his art of calligraphy to writing the name of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in a grand variety of geometric and cursive designs against an equally dramatic range of backgrounds and created around 300 panels. __
