``People also call me a lover of folk and tribal art,'' he continues. It is, in fact, these very `people' who have coined their experiences with the Ahmedabad-based artist into a book, Invisible Order: A Tribute to Haku Shah, edited by Eberhard Fischer, and published by Art Indus, an upmarket art gallery in Santushti. The glossy, 208-page tome, which documents Hakubhai's work in different creative fields, including paintings, photographs and installations, was also released by Kapila Vatysayan, Chairperson, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), and Hakubhai's friend of 40 years.

``The book documents forms of creativity that will otherwise never come to the mainstream,'' says Hakubhai, modestly leaving out the fact that 68 of the world's better-known names from the corridors of art and architecture have penned their tributes to him. Invisible Order has also been designed by his son, documentary filmmaker Parthiv.

His latest exhibition of 40-odd paintings, is folksy -- he calls it ``celebrating life'' -- in its treatment of subject, and each framed square bursts with solid colours. ``I love people. The inner being of a person is very intense, and I try to bring that out in my paintings,'' explains a khadi-clad Hakubhai, cross-legged and at ease on the gallery floor.

Over 45 years, Hakubhai -- who admits to a strong Gandhian influence -- has worked towards giving tribes and their art forms their due, mostly in his native Gujarat. ``We live with it, but then we leave it,'' he laments, of the stepmotherly treatment meted out to any form of folk art. Of course, the fact that it's now been appropriated as `ethnic chic' into the realm of `high' art, is not something that pleases the artist either. ``Art in urban India is booming, but it is disturbing to find that in between the people who are creating it, and those who are sharing it, we are losing our sensitivity,'' he says.

Another thing that ``disturbs, in fact, harasses'' Hakubhai: ``The filth, the sound and the big buildings that are coming up all around.'' But the artist who finds his wife Vilu's dal as creative as a piece of art or a surgeon's operation, says he remains rooted to the India he loves. Which is, ``the India of the clay smell, the trees, the people and the 5000-year-old monuments''.