A friendship that blossomed over art
led to the Mehlli Gobhai retrospective
Text: Nancy Adajania and Ranjit Hoskote Photos: Noshir Gobhai
Meherwan Minocher Gobhai (1931-2018), always known as Mehlli Gobhai, was one of India’s most distinguished and pathbreaking abstractionists. We got to know Mehlli when we were very young, as teenagers. We soon discovered how many interests we had in common: he became involved in our lives, and we in his. We would go over to see him, attend poetry readings and lectures together, often be on panel discussions together. There were the wonderful long phone calls, when we would discuss something we had heard the previous evening, or something he was reading. And then, for a period of 12 years......