At home, Nony Singh's Mahal

On an artist and her much-travelled artwork

- Mayank Austen Soofi

Shy of revealing her age, 88-year-old Nony Singh remembers finishing Blue Painting "around the time of President Kennedy's assassination." The oil painting hangs in a balcony-facing corner of the artist's residence in Vasant Vihar.

Since Nony Singh doesn't sell her work, all of it has always been in her possession. The Blue Painting is an exception, coloured with an unusual story. In the winter of 2021, one of Nony Singh's four daughters received an e-mail from a stranger in England. It sparked off a correspondence—common friends were mentioned, long-ago events recalled. While the e-mails tell of the aforementioned artwork, they also unwittingly summon a sense of the era when people wrote polite letters, patiently waited for replies, before writing again. Edited excerpts.

Dear Dayanita (if I may),