Selling Crows

Saba Khan is bold with colours and that is probably one of the reasons that we enjoyed her images the most. From "Good Times" where women we usually encounter in social pages of magazines barely seem to retain their feminine beauty but remind us much of transgenders we encountered in Bol, to the stark green parrots with bright red noses that are sitting in front of the Quran, her choice of colour is what makes her paintings appeal to the viewer immediately. On digging more into Saba Khan I found another painting that I would like to share.

Here too Saba Khan is bold. The painting above is called "Selling Crows"and reflects the condition of a working class person from our society. The upward direction of the cycle shows the desire of all people to move up the social class. This safaid posh man is one such member of society but is forced to do hard work evident through the colour of his dark hands. Yet even in his climb up the social ladder, there is a problem portrayed in the picture through the front tyre being stuck in what can be assumed as mud or dirt.

When we think of birds that people would want to buy as pets, we never think of crows. These creatures are always seen with contempt, straying around to find any food and definitely with a voice that is unpleasant for all listeners. Yet this man has chosen to sell crows of all other birds probably because he has no other viable profession left or because all the sweet singing birds are already in cages in elite households. Selling crows is therefore a disrespectful profession and it almost seems that the face of the man was intentionally cut off from the painting, a way for the man to hide his shame. The crows sitting at the back of his cage are not painted as black but trapped in a white cage; it is almost as if decolourizing them reduces the humiliation associated with selling them in the market.