Adil Mansuri, who now lives in New Jersey, is not only a creative and elegant calligrapher, but also a fine ghazal and nazm poet in both Urdu and Gujarati. I met him through our mutual friend, the distinguished Urdu writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. It's been my honor and pleasure to own several of his calligraphic paintings, and to have a number of his designs and drafts in my possession as well.
I so admired his work that in 1992 I asked him if he'd be so kind as to provide a cover design for my book Nets of Awareness. The title was taken from a very free translation of Ghalib's verse {1,4}. In response, Adil sent me not one or two designs, but dozens. Here are most of his experimental drafts, which he quickly dashed off with a magic marker:
**using the whole of Ghalib's verse**
using aagahii only:
*01* -- *02*
-- *03* -- *04* --
*05* -- *06* -- *07*
-- *08* -- *09* --
*10* -- *11* -- *12*
-- *13* -- *14* --
*15* -- *16* -- *17*
-- *18* -- *19* --
*20* -- *21* -- *22*
-- *23* -- *24* --
*25* -- *26* -- *27*
-- *28* -- *29* --
*30* -- *31* -- *32*
-- *33*
using aagahii shaped-- very appropriately to the verse--
like a bird:
*01* -- *02*
-- *03* -- *04*
-- *05* -- *06*
-- *07* -- *08*
-- *09* -- *10*
-- *11* -- *12*
-- *13* -- *14*
-- *15*
using aagahii daam:
*the winner* -- *01*
-- *02* -- *03*
-- *04* -- *05*
-- *06* -- *07*
-- *08* -- *09*
-- *10* -- *11*
-- *12* -- *13*
The actual cover (1994); the final design was chosen by me with the advice and help of S. R. Faruqi:
