Maimuna Feroze Nana – your art which has been exhibited in various shows in Italy, contains the variety of your experiences which have their roots very far away. You yourself have emphasized the importance of your childhood in shaping your life. It all began in the torrid desert of Sindh in Pakistan. Is that so?

Yes, in Hyderabad which was a small town then in the Sindh desert. Today it is the second largest city in the province. At the time, my Father, a district judge under English rule, had been transferred to a remote village in the desert and as there were no hospitals nor doctors, my parents decided to travel to Karachi for my birth. I was born along the way, ten days early, in Hyderabad, in a “Dak” bungalow used for visiting judges. I am sure this incident has somehow marked my destiny!

Hyderabad, home to one of the oldest universities of the region and surrounded by important archaeological sites like Harappa and Moen- jo- daro, was also famous for its intellectuals, its Sufi saints, and its artisans. Before the “Partition” (of India and Pakistan) its population consisted of a large number of rich Hindu merchants, some of whom used to have their clothes sent from England, while their womenfolk travelled with their personal French hairdressers.

Hyderabad was called the Paris of Sindh because its streets were washed with water from the river Indus which gave its name to India (Hindostan). Just outside the city walls is the small walled city of Tando Thoro, which belonged to my Mother’s family. My great grandfather was born there in 1853. A renowned scholar and poet, he authored over 200 books and contributed to the renewal of Sindhi literature. 

Ours was a privileged childhood in an era when all the higher class families knew each other – a liberal, cultured, anglicized élite. We studied English literature and history and spoke in English at home. The local languages (Sindhi, Urdu, Punjabi, etc.) were used only to communicate with our servants. My mother was of Georgian/English descent and spoke several languages. Following her family tradition, she was a writer and translated the poetry of Garcia Lorca and St John of the Cross from Spanish. She sang arias from Italian, French and German operas and travelled everywhere with her piano which she played every evening.

At the beginning of his career as a district judge, my Father was transferred every 2 years to the hottest, most dangerous places in the desert because he refused to bow down to the pressure put on him by politicians and the powerful local landowners.

Sometimes months went by without seeing a friend or relative from the city, shut up with our servants and guards in the judge’s bungalow with its high mud walls. Of these years in “exile” I remember the shoddy schools we went to, the tremendous heat and dust storms, and the lack of running water and electricity. Above all, I remember lying under a pile of hand sewn quilts shivering with high malaria fever and recurring nightmares. Our sole companions were danger and fear.

My father was sometimes obliged to sentence bandits, and occasionally several male members of the same family, to death or to life imprisonment. In those days the judge’s house, the jail and court-house were close to each other so we children were witnesses to these events which left a deep impression on us. One of my installations for Palazzo Doria Pamphili in Valmontone, “In My Little Bed I Lie”, was my attempt to evoke the terror of children alone, under a starry desert sky, hearing armed guards calling to each other to keep themselves awake in the night.

My father was a passionate amateur archaeologist and a collector of jewellery, embroidery and the typical clothes of the nomadic Sindhi tribes, as well as first century A.D. Gandhara sculpture. Not being able to “go on vacation”, my father used to take us out on “digs” right into the torrid desert to look for abandoned Buddhist stupas or cemeteries or prehistoric sites. Our scalpels were spoons and penknives!

When we finally returned to Karachi, my father’s reputation as a collector and my Mother’s as a scholar spread, and anyone who was interested in antiques or the local culture came to visit. I remember Agatha Christie and her archeologist husband, Sir Mortimer Wheeler; Prof G. Tucci, the Orientalist; Annemarie Schimmel, the Islamist; the Himalayan climber, Hermann Buhl; the uncle of the present Emperor of Japan, together with ambassadors, writers, travellers…. We were never alone! My father succeeded in obtaining funding from UNESCO to save Moen-jo-daro, one of the world’s earliest settlements (2500 b.c), and in Karachi and Hyderabad roads and museums are named after him. These were the surroundings in which I grew up, never realizing that with the end of British rule, the India and Pakistan we had known was about to disappear forever.

After Pakistan you went to India. How was the choice made? You came into contact with Gandhi’s ideas and his followers. How and to what extent did they influence your life and art? What are the major differences between the Indian, English and Italian methods of teaching?

Like many parents from the East, my parents invested in the best education they could afford, often paying a high price for their choice. (In our case it meant selling a piece of their collection). Hence the Sir J.J. School of Art was chosen as it had an excellent reputation. Moreover, one of their best friends from Hyderabad, Bhai Pratap Dialdas, had recently immigrated to Bombay due to the Partition so I was sent to his house.

Lal Dada, as we called him, was a friend of Gandhiji and Nehru and members of the party who fought for Independence and who one could meet often in his house. I lived in Bombay for two years, learning about Indian and Hindu culture, history, classical music, painting, in the home of this enlightened businessman who, like my father, had a passion for collecting: paintings by Tagore and Jamini Roy, south Indian bronzes, ancient Egyptian relics, books and records. He founded the port of Gandhidam in honour of Gandhiji and like him wore only homespun “khadi”. 

But the person who most influenzed my life, art and way of thinking was Krishnamurti, the philosopher. His ideas on liberating the mind of every hidden prejudice, of choosing the Unknown for the Known, of constantly observing oneself without judging, underlie all of my present existence.

The teaching methods at the Sir J.J. School of Art were traditional, with one foot in the East, another in the West. Hence we copied classical Greek and Roman, Indian casts and made studies from nature. In the work of more senior students one could detect experiments in contemporary styles and techniques. At the Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts in England, however, we were constantly encouraged to experiment and find our own voices. Finding a way to express such different cultures, however, was very difficult for me.

The article continues to International Alternative Investment Review – n.1, 2010 www.iaireview.org/subscribe