Aysha gives scant regard to the discomfort of having an injured right shoulder, as her sharp pencil runs across a sheet of paper, leaving behind deft strokes and marks. After all, pain is only secondary when she has a bigger resolve in mind. The dislocated limb she has been handling for three months doesn’t stand in her way when Aysha Musliyarakam is engrossed in her vocation. She only sees a fast-approaching deadline within which she has to deliver the promise – a handful of illustrations for a Malayalam daily’s Onam special edition. When the task came calling, she was recuperating from an accident, speaking volumes about this unsung woman illustrator hailing from the interiors of Perinthalmanna.
Since 1995, Aysha has been present in a male-dominated world of illustrators.
Aysha’s illustrations for Nakshatrangalude Album
Before approaching her for this interview, we came across a set of illustrations she did for an upcoming novel Nakshatrangalude Album of author/director Kalavoor Ravikumar. Quite unexpectedly, they were colourful, with little over dominance of the contours of grey. But the artist’s love for lines is palpable. “I like to work with pen and ink, personally. They speak a lot and help in detailing. For this work, the demand was to work with colours, which I did accordingly,” she says. Her foray into the male bastion was a result out of her active presence and constant interaction with a circle of artist friends. In 1995, when her first illustrations appeared for a memorabilia titled Orma, written by Musafar Ahammed, she was just another wide-eyed aficionado of artists Namboothiri, A.S. and Madanan.
“Basically, I am an art teacher and many people identify me as a painter. Call it a blessing, a set of artists like me gathers for a collective called Varakoottam in Perinthalmanna. Until joining this team, I was painting for the sake of art. This gathering upped my confidence to try newer terrains. I moved on to doing abstract paintings. We conducted exhibitions and kept on expanding our space,” she says. Seeing her skill with creating illustrations, a member of Varakoottam referred her to the editor of the daily, which subsequently made her an independent artist for print media.
Pursuing a three-year course in drawing, Aysha, from Balussery in Kozhikode, began her tryst with art in 1986. There was more in store than learning. There, she met her future husband, Yoonus Musliyarakath, also an art teacher. After a whirlwind romance, Aysha shoved aside community barriers to marry a man of her choice. They are parents to three boys now. After the 1995 assignment, her next work came only in 2012, for the poetry collection of Sandhya in Kozhikode. In this period, she was busy with paintings and her teaching career. The third set of illustrations was for another work of poetry Thikayathe Pettava in 2013, authored by Shameem Seagul, also the curator of Varakoottam.
“If I hadn’t met my husband, I would have ended up somewhere else. Back then, at my home, a girl learning art was not looked upon as a desirable thing. His encouragement was so much that he was there with me in all my endeavours,” says Aysha. In 2015, she did her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Karnataka University. Aysha’s home doubles up as an artist’s paradise and a homemaker’s workspace. Her workplace, Silver Mount International School in Perinthalmanna, is also supportive of her vocation. While talking over the phone for this interview, she was in the midst of preparing dinner for her family.
Observing the current trend, Aysha feels women illustrators are no longer a rare species. “Given a chance, our girls are ready to come up, explore and emerge successful. Though less in numbers, slowly they are making their presence known,” she signs off.
