DISCOURSE: THE STAMP OF A MASTER

The first time I stood beneath the ceiling of the Sadequain Gallery at Frere Hall, I could not look away. Arz-o-Samawat [The Earth and the Heavens] was Sadequain’s most ambitious mural and possibly his largest. His demise in 1986 left the mural permanently unfinished, and the empty blue space that remains gives the work a strange, mystic appeal, holding in itself the same intrigue that one might feel for the promised idea of heaven. Sadequain is said to have called it his own Sistine Chapel. I came across the same mural again recently, in miniature, on a postage stamp. On June 30, 2026, Sadequain’s 96th birthday, Pakistan Post unveiled three record-length stamps in the artist’s honour at…