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Gulammohammed Sheikh has just finished reading Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes To Me. “It was a riveting read,” he says. You might mistake the house he shares with his wife Nilima Sheikh as belonging to a professor – books spill out of shelves in his two-room library, from cupboards in every room of the house, over ledges and tables and sometimes even on the floor – and you wouldn’t be wrong. For Gulam sa’ab has taught art history; is a published poet; and is currently engaged with editing essays written over the years, for publication. There are books on art, of course, but also literature, biographies, autobiographies, fiction – in English, Hindi and Gujarati. He keeps giving them away too, “to the Faculty of Fine Arts” at the university where he taught. “ I even give them cupboards for their storage,” but between books received and books bought, managing them is still a chore.

Books apart, his painting and his studio constitute his world. “ In one sense, the studio is a home within the home. Whenever I return from outside, I don’t think I’ve...

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