* Alkazi’s stint as head of the National School of Drama (NSD) became the stuff of cultural lore

* Arpita Singh had her first one-person show at Art Heritage, the gallery Alkazi ran with his wife Roshan

* The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts has a formidable collection of photographs of the colonial period

The last time I met Ebrahim Alkazi was at his 90th birthday celebration five years ago. He greeted each guest and received the felicitations with his usual grace. At the glittering occasion, hosted by his children in Delhi, scores of luminaries from the art, theatre and film world were present. And that was no surprise, for Alkazi’s contributions to modern Indian theatre and art were legendary.

Alkazi, who died at the age of 94 on August 4, was a patron of modern Indian art from the 1950s. His stint as the head of the National School of Drama (NSD) from 1962 to 1977 became the stuff of the cultural lore of an emerging nation. He was an outstanding collector, and the gallery Art Heritage, which he ran with his wife Roshan from 1977, became a landmark in Delhi’s Mandi House circle. Not only did he mount distinctive shows of artists such as MF Husain, Akbar Padamsee and KG Subramanyan, he was also known for hosting debut one-person shows of unknown artists who later became gilt-edged signatures.

Arpita Singh, for instance, had her first one-person show at Alkazi’s gallery — and recounts how it happened quite accidentally. Alkazi was mounting a show of young abstract artist Eric Bowen’s works. Among the ready-to-be-mounted works was a small painting by Singh that had somehow got mixed up with Bowen’s collection. Alkazi enquired whose work it was and, when Bowen named his classmate, he asked to meet her. And that’s how her first one-person show came about. Alkazi also wrote about her in the Art Heritage catalogue, an assessment that still has validity. Few know that Alkazi was also a very fine writer.

More than 10 years ago, he wanted me to write a book on the history of printmaking and graphic arts in India. He asked me to look at the role of Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, and the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). He gave me a generous advance. Unfortunately, it was a difficult time in my personal life with a critical illness in the family. After a while, he started getting impatient. So, I returned the advance, explaining my situation. He was upset, and saddened. He told me, “Time is running out for me.” For a time, our relationship was frosty. But then a strange coincidence occurred.

I bought a folder, one of those with plastic flaps inside and sheets of paper separating each flap. Imagine my astonishment when the sheets turned out to be photocopies of correspondence between Govind Vidyarthi, an IPTA stalwart referred to me by Alkazi, and artist Chittaprosad and other IPTA members. I collected the bunch of photocopies and went to hand them over to Alkazi. The archivist was as enthused about the find as I was, and the coolness between us thawed.

Alkazi’s was not just an elitist act of collecting for personal pleasure. Instead, he wanted to open museums and promote research and scholarship. The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi, which is well known for its formidable collection of photographs of the colonial period from the 19th century, was set up for just that. This collection has enormous academic relevance and has extensively been used by scholars and academic institutions. In 2007, Delhi University mounted an exhibition of photographs from the Alkazi collection when it commemorated 150 years of the 1857 uprising.

One of the remarkable talents of Alkazi as a gallerist was the drama that he could create with his hangings. His genius for staging spectacular productions has been much discussed too. Theatre director and former NSD head Anuradha Kapur says, “Alkazi gave modern Indian theatre a language.”

In the Bombay of the ’50s and ’60s, he used various devices to make his productions a grand dramatic experience. One of them was to involve visual artists in the stage design. For his staging of TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral , he commissioned Adi Davierwala to make a cross, which dominated the stage. He asked Husain to do some stage design for one of his plays. When he was staging a play, he would often put up an exhibition of modern art in the foyer of the theatre.

As a very young director, he could push the boundaries if he wanted to create an effect. Once, he told me, when he was staging Macbeth on the terrace of his Bombay residence, he asked the family cook to bring an animal part from the butcher, which he stuck on a pole. It was a ghoulish setting, creating an unsettling mood.

The anecdote left me with questions. Did he do this to shake up a complacent audience or to throw a challenge as a young director? The answers are not easy. One only knows that it is not often that one encounters such a multi-faceted genius who had so many ideas to encourage and channelise Indian creativity.

And it will be equally difficult, perhaps, to find an intellectual giant with such a puckish sense of humour. I recall an anecdote he had narrated once. Decades ago, he had won the first prize at a Left-sponsored debate in Calcutta. The prize comprised the collected works of Soviet politician Georgy Malenkov. On his way back home, as the train left Howrah Station, Alkazi kept dropping his prize, volume by volume, into the Hooghly from his compartment window with great glee.

He had no time for Shibboleths.

Ella Datta is an art historian and critic

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