Delhiwale: Sakina’s Tyeb Mehta

She called him Tyebi

She called him Tyebi. The world knew him as the great modernist painter Tyeb Mehta.

Himani’s and Sakina with Tyeb Mehta’s 1966 painting Falling Figure.

Four years shy of a century, Sakina Mehta brings out her first book this month. My Tyebi: A Memoir tracks her six decades with Tyeb and their life in the world of modern Indian art. The couple’s daughter Himani wrote it with author Nusrat Jafri, using over a decade of recorded conversations with Sakina and her archive.

From the mid-1960s through the 1970s, Sakina and Tyeb lived with their children, Himani and Yusuf, in Delhi: first in a bungalow outhouse in Nizamuddin East, then in a two-bedroom pad in Nizamuddin West. Tyeb would scarcely have imagined then the obscene sums his works would one day fetch. This year, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Saket hosted a major retrospective of his work. (The photo, taken some years ago at Himani’s Delhi home, shows her and Sakina with his 1966 painting Falling Figure.)

During his struggling years in Delhi, Tyeb painted daily. Sakina was the family’s roti winner, working as an office secretary in Jorbagh. She now lives in Mumbai, where she grew up in a Bohra Muslim family. After Tyeb’s passing in 2009, she would spend long stretches at daughter Himani’s home, then in South Delhi. Once she shared with this reporter her recipe for the Bohra biryani she would cook for Tyeb. Sakina’s version uses chicken instead of lamb, for red meat was out after Tyeb’s first heart attack in 1983. Here’s the recipe for biryani à la Tyeb.

Clean 1 kg chicken. Mix with 1 teaspoon (tsp) salt, juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp ginger paste. Deep fry 4 sliced onions in oil until brown. Reserve the oil for potatoes. Blend onions with 500 g curd. Add to the chicken with 2 tsp lal mirchi powder, 1 tsp garam masala and a dash of haldi. Marinate overnight in a tray in the fridge. Next morning, grind 2 green chillies, some coriander leaves and 6 garlic pods. Lightly fry in 4 tsp ghee. Add to marinade. Peel and halve 4 potatoes. Soak in salted water. Drain and dry after soaking. Deep fry the potatoes in reserved oil until reddish brown. Add to the chicken. Soak a few saffron strands in ½ cup warm milk. Set aside. Soak ½ kg basmati rice for 30 minutes. Boil water in a large pot with 2 bay leaves and some salt. Add rice. Partly cook the rice, then drain. It finishes cooking with the chicken. Heat additional ghee in another large pot. Spread half the partly cooked rice evenly. Add the chicken and potatoes. Cover completely with remaining rice. Pour saffron and soaking milk over rice. Rinse leftover masala from the marinating tray with ½ cup water. Pour over the remaining rice. Line the pot’s rim with kneaded wheat dough, press the lid onto it and place a brick on top. Cook for 1 hour on low flame. Serve with sweet-salty dahi.