What it be ? Sea, land or sky! Shall he praise the beauty of the wind among the derelict fields, or kneel before the breathtaking spirit of silence reigning supreme in the downward dive of a snowy giant's high?

The poet in Keshav Malik penned the lines for Manohar Kaul. Both of them treasure the memory the youth spent in the valley at the foothill of the Himalayas. Kaul would go rowing in the Dal lake with friends and "before we realised, it was two in the morning!" The icy stream killing the stillness of the luminous night, the rows of chinar standing guard at the horizon; the silvery crest of a cresent moon; the world bathed in the purity of the snowflakes: indeed, they looked no further for paradise.

Decades down the winding course of life, Kaul draws on the memory of the ethereal landscape that was his home. The valley lives on in its pristine glory: the woodlands have not lost their leafy haze; the misty mountains are suffused with tranquillity in the canvas of this painter approaching 70. After meditating on the Mystique of the Moon, his watercolours are now celebrating Auras of the Dawn in Kashmir.

Both the series are the fruits of Kaul's communion with nature, "recollected in transquillity and reproduced from imagination," he adds. If, earlier, the artist had used the watercolour medium to recapitulate the transformation of nature in the magic of moonlight, the current work is imbued with the meditative spirit of the day-break hour. The theme acquires a personal significance for Kaul as it did for the sages of yore, "all along my creative years I have worked at this amritvela (peaceful hour), when the atmosphere is so fresh."

Viewing the series at AIFACS, you may wonder why you trace no note of nostalgia, no tint of sadness in the exhibits. That, you may say, would be natural for one who roamed the valley when it was green. Now that it is pillaged and pained, should not the sensitivity of an artist's soul resonate the trauma that rents the milieu? No, asserts Kaul: that's the burden of a reported, an illustrator. "I cannot show a man killing another man," he pleads. But if he cannot show that, he can certainly depict the dream that is sure to dissolve in the harsh reality of destruction. "Also," Kaul hopes, "if people see how beautiful Kashmir is, their desire to retain it will be strengthened."

As a bureaucrat serving the ministry of information and broadcasting, Kaul had gone back to Kashmir in the early 70s."I could never think that the same men, who watched the surrender of General Niazi without any sorrow, could pick up the gun!" The boys have gone astray, he remonstrates.

Kaul's homeland was not only the paradise come to earth: it was of strategic importance to the nation, neighbouring as it did countries like China, Afghanistan and the newborn Pakistan.

Kaul, of course, is as much at home in the Capital which has seen him at his creative best. He has been busy, since he retired from the service in the '80s, bringing out the art journal Kala Darshan. Almost single- handedly, "I have even been the errand boy," he tells you. The experience has undoubtedly benefited the art fraternity, since it has helped Kaul revive Roopa-Lekha, the journal of the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) following his selection as its chairman.

In that capacity, Kaul has worked another wonder: the four galleries, which were once given up by artists for its derelic condition, are now among the best in the Capital. Besides, there are plans afoot to build up a library and a conference hall "as at IIC". The Society is expanding too: it has acquired buildings "at Ghaziabad, for the graphic artists and at Chandigarh too." It has ambitions of providing studio space to artists, "for six months at a time". Above all, it is honouring veteran artists - those above 60 - and giving them "a small amount of Rs. 3,000 per annum."

All this for the world of artists. And in the small hours of the morning, before the world starts making its demands on Kaul, there is the divine landscape which the artist carried within him when he left Kashmir behind.

Ratnottama Sen Gupta, Art Editor, The Times of India (Jan. 1995)