Shakila started her life on the pavements of Kolkata.

Deserted by her husband, Shakila’s mother Jaheran Bibi sold vegetables in one of the city markets. She worked extremely hard to bring up her three daughters. But when the world oppresses, there is often an invisible hand that protects and shields. In Jaheran’s life, that force arrived in the guise of B.R. Panesar, a sensitive, bright and philanthropic soul.

Panesar was a statistician by profession, an honoured member of the Indian Statistical Institute, hailing originally from the Indian state of Punjab. He made Kolkata his home, and lived at the YMCA, on Kolkata’s arterial Chowringhee Road. Leading a life of an intellectual hermit, Panesar harboured a hidden passion. Silently, yet steadily, he trained under Bengal’s famous artists, and soon emerged as a successful graphic and collage artist. Though self-taught, his works were sensitive and sophisticated.

In his spare hours, Panesar helped the children who lived on the pavement alongside the YMCA. He bought them books, and helped to enrol them in the city’s municipal schools. He did the same with Shakila and her siblings. When Shakila was barely 12 years old, Jaheran Bibi made a shocking announcement. She had to marry Shakila off, as life on the pavement was proving increasingly unsafe for the little girl. Akbar, another vegetable vendor in the market, was ready to accept her daughter as a bride.

Panesar was devastated! Marrying off a 12-year-old was not right, he felt. However, given Jaheran’s plight, he relented. Shakila was married off and went to live in Nor gram on the outskirts of Kolkata.

Life was indeed hard. Shakila had to cope as Akbar’s second wife and adjust to the vagaries and poverty of rural Bengal. By the time she was about 16 or 17 years old, she came up with a brilliant proposal. She wanted to earn and help her struggling husband.

Panesar helped. He convinced the All Bengal Women’s Association to provide Shakila with orders for supplying paper bags, which the centre needed on a regular basis. Panesar provided the newspapers, and Shakila started creating bags out of them. Soon, she got accustomed to handling, and crafting with, paper. As a child, along with her siblings, she enjoyed watching Panesar do collages, drawings and graphics.

Life in Nor gram carried on. Suddenly, one day, Shakila expressed the desire to give her Baba – as Panesar was called by the whole family – a birthday gift.

“What can we, the poor, give a learned man?” asked Akbar. “Maybe, Shakila, you can cook something for Baba.”

“No way,” said Shakila. “Instead of food, I will make a painting for him, with paper. Can you help me get the supplies?” she pleaded with her husband. Akbar was abashed! “Paintings! With what?” he asked.

“With paper,” said Shakila. She had watched Panesar paint and do collages with paper. Akbar, though baffled, soon obliged; he managed to procure some coloured paper from magazines and a few pieces of hardboard.

In a matter of days, Shakila created 3 or 4 collages on the theme of vegetables. They were magical! When she finally presented them to Panesar, he was totally taken aback. Therein lies the lucky twist. Had it been anyone else, he would have just said ‘thank you’ and adorned his walls or shelves with the works. But Panesar, being a practising artist and a member of the contemporary artists’ society, at once saw the virtues and splendour of what Shakila had created.

“I was astounded and utterly mesmerised by the innate brilliance of the spontaneous renderings,” he described. Without losing much time, he carried the works to the next meeting of the Society of Contemporary Artists and showed them to the likes of Bikash Bhattacharjee and others. They were equally enchanted!

“What took us five years to master at an art institute, this child has accomplished so effortlessly! She is indeed a prodigy,” remarked Bikash. “We need to nurture her.”

Soon, they equipped Shakila with art supplies and encouraged her to work. Shakila excelled by the day, and the senior artists soon joined Panesar in organising her first exhibition at Chitrakoot Art Gallery in Kolkata in 1991. I recall the catalogue that was published on the occasion. The works had a touch of the naive, and were immensely contemporary and original – a style that became Shakila’s leitmotif. The hand-torn edges provided the magic texture. She blended the abstract and figurative effortlessly, lending her works a layered and nuanced edge – almost bordering tribal ‘dream paintings’.

When CIMA started in 1993, Panesar approached me to help represent Shakila. CIMA organised her first show in collaboration with the World Bank; our friend, Bim Bissell, was the force behind it all, as she was working there at the time. In view of Shakila’s special case, the World Bank permitted us to sell her works. Out of the 30 works Shakila presented, 29 were sold instantly. That became Shakila’s principal money earned, which Panesar invested on her behalf. Bank interest rates were a whopping 13-14% in those days, and Shakila soon started earning regular interest. By then, she had her children – a beautiful daughter, Kashmira, and sons Raju and Bappa. Shakila used her money to educate them.

Thereafter, regular group shows started happening, followed by two major breakthroughs. Shakila was the only visual artist selected by the India Festival authorities at the Galeries Lafayette, Paris, in 1995, and commissioned in 2000 by the Hannover Fair authorities, Germany, to create the stall for the Grameen Bank with a hundred giant installation pieces. The proposal was first conceptualised by Rajeev Sethi, the reputed curator from Delhi.

While I trembled with trepidation, Shakila jumped at the challenge! “Didi, I will be able to do it,” she remarked, emphatically.

Shakila’s small mud house was completely inadequate for large-format works. A special pandal in the form of a covered hall was created, and Shakila toiled endlessly to fulfil the commission.

The Hannover project, in the form of a massive installation, was a sheer triumph! I cannot recall any artist who has recycled paper to such brilliant effect. Two dimensions fused with three-dimensional forms creating a visual spectacle, which shone in the Grameen Bank stall at the Hannover Fair. It was this project that put Shakila on the map, emerging as one of the most successful subaltern artists of India.

Since then, Shakila has never looked back. Over the years, she has won several awards, accolades and honours. She emerged as a beacon of light for all underprivileged women. She rose above religion, caste and creed, and restored hope and creative freedom in an acrimonious age fraught with social constraints and violence against women.

Shakila started off with a charming naïveté and humour, but the hypocrisies and vagaries of life imbued her works with an occasional darkness. She internalised her experiences and finally sublimated them into immensely poignant expressions – resplendent with subtle humour and sensitivity, hitting out silently yet forcefully, whenever her conscience and creative instincts beckoned. Her works are genuine reflections on her life and times. A recent documentary film, directed by Subhasis Chakraborty and produced by the National Film Development Corporation of India, aptly captures the spirit that shapes and guides Shakila and her world.

The story of Shakila is a deeply inspirational chronicle of an emerging woman of our subcontinent – from extreme poverty and suffering, she rose to a creative resurgence and ultimate triumph. I feel humbled and immensely proud of her. She has repeatedly restored our hope and faith in the power and magic of the visual medium and its ability to uplift, inspire and sustain creative excellence and human dignity. Shakila does not pontificate or judge. Her art is all about light and shadow, at the confluence of reality and the invisible. Shakila’s art continues to trace light during moments of utter darkness.