‘Husain’s exile makes me ashamed of my culture. . . the state hasn’t expelled him, mob culture has’

It’s not a matter of the source of energy. It’s like . . . you don’t ask where I get the energy to breathe. Similarly, my energy to create is automatic. Without it I cannot live.

•Sir, hum toh pachaas sal ki umr mein buddhe ho gaye, but you carry on in your eighties.

When you are consistently in creative activity, it fills you up with a regime, a life, and a zest to live on and on. I cannot think I’m going to end. Only when I think this creativity may end, that will be the end of myself. The reason, I know: because I’m forced to live in a silent world. When there’s silence around you, the consequence is that you doubt your own being. You want to find proof of whether you exist, because nothing brings you proof that you are. Then I create, and when I create something out of nothing, it gives me proof that I’m a being, I’m there. But if I create the same thing again and again, it will be like inhaling what I have just exhaled. . . so every time, I want a new breath, a new style, a new thing to work with.

Silence works both ways. One is that I have already explained to you, that it will make you doubt the depths. On the other hand, it will make you listen to yourself. Poet (Mohammad) Iqbal once said, ‘Is khamoshi mein jayee, is khamoshi mein jayee, kitne barande na lein, taro ke kafilen ko meri sada daya ho.’ How high could my life rise that it provided guidance to the stars! When silence came, I started to live with it when I was eight years old. My soul forgot . . . I did not know it was also a gift. But about 10 years ago I had a (cochlear) implant. This implant brought back hope. Once this hope came back, at first I was excited, but soon I started to feel miserable. I had lived in a world of my own. Like a blind man, I was searching alone for life around you. Every face, he has an idea . . . he might think of a very ugly woman as very beautiful. Then if you bring him his sight back, it will uproot him from where he has lived. So it is with sound. Sound also makes an effect on the image around you. And you start living in that world. When my hearing came back, I (realised I had) made not what I thought they (others) have made. That was very disturbing. I could not reinvent things. So I got the implants removed.

... contd.