Noorjehan Bilgrami, as a woman and as a multidisciplinary artist (for lack of a better word), is deeply rooted in her heritage, a heritage she finds and weaves into all she encounters. “The granite boulders and the green hills of Hyderabad,” she recalls her birthplace, “drew me to the rich, red soil of Sri Lanka. I was always closely drawn to my origins.”

Bilgrami traces these origins, tangibly feeling them in the textures, visuals, and mitti of all the places that have informed her person and thus her art. For her, art is not only about making beautiful objects; it is an act that goes beyond time and place, “an intuitive response to the material you are working with, using your own hands.”

At the heart of Bilgrami’s philosophy is a deep appreciation for the haptic touch – the direct, unmediated interaction with materials through the hands. This tactile engagement is where creation begins. It is in the space between her hands, as they mould clay, weave fabric, or paint on paper, that makes each medium she touches a process both deeply personal and intentionally grounded.

That groundedness shines through instantly, “I’m not a very people person,” she admits, “You can’t change inwardly as a person because you are put into situations by factors that are not within your control.” Whatever she is working on leads her towards something else, but on the inside? “On the inside, you are always fragile,” she smiles. “Always butterflies before an interview or a public speech.”

This has never stopped her from chasing her curiosity, wherever and whenever it sparks. On one of Bilgrami’s many visits to Sri Lanka, “a culture that affected me very much”, her glance fell upon a magazine at the dentist’s office. In a section dedicated to local architecture, she was immediately drawn to the SOS Villages in Piliyandala and embarked on a “seemingly endless” tuk-tuk journey. Two hours later, she fell in love with the architectural design and obtained the architect C. Anjalendran’s number from the locals, who told her of his rare visits. Unfazed, she wrote him a note expressing her admiration for his work. “Of course, I never heard from him,” she laughed, “but this is how connections start to take place in your life.” Many years later, Anjalendran accepted Bilgrami’s invitation and travelled to Pakistan.

This openness to connect with the land and its inhabitants is driven by an intense desire to learn, and Bilgrami disciplines that desire by practising Vipassana. The strict meditative moments “give you frightening glimpses of yourself,” she pauses, “but that’s the only moment of truth that you experience…so experiential in its ability to open up doors through which you can see yourself. It helped me find my inner being.”

It also allowed Bilgrami to retain a determined calm, enabling her to identify and move in the direction she wanted. At the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture (which she co-founded), she would “begin a period by collecting everyone together and trying to get them to sit with their eyes closed for five minutes,” she smiles, “I think they hated me for that but in hindsight, many expressed how telling those five minutes were, trying to be quiet and realising how difficult it is for you to do just that.”

To nurture that silence in the habar dabar (hustle and bustle) of Karachi, Bilgrami constructed a concrete sanctuary in the form of Koel, one that does not let in the relentless tooting of horns and squabbling of men. The use of Koel’s space and “openness to let the light, the wind and the insects come in” is a concept she attributes to Sri Lanka. An anecdote that has stayed with Bilgrami, all these years later, stems from the 10 days she spent in Kandy, at a Buddhist monastery. There, she met a female monk who happened to be a former student of the prolific architect Geoffrey Bawa. Before the noble silence took place, Bilgrami asked the monk, “How do you manage to live here? You are asked to keep your torch on, look under your bed for snakes and check for scorpions. Aren’t you scared?” The monk smiled, pointed towards the scorpion and said “A scorpion carries all its poison in that one little tip. If you let it move, it won’t do you any harm. But outside this wilderness, you are surrounded by humans. And they are full of poison.” Bilgrami took that gem of knowledge and distilled it to refine and grow in her surroundings.

She has learnt to tune out the noise. “With art and with everything that I do, I don’t approach it according to what people would like to see. I do what I believe in, as long as I am being honest with myself.”

Bilgrami’s interactions with different cultures and environments are acts of giving, taking, discarding and disseminating whatever resounds with her present. The Koel Gallery and Koel Shop are an ode to these learnings, and the latter remains today what Bilgrami envisioned from the start: timeless. “I am not a fashion designer because I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in timelessness.” The handcrafted clothing at Koel transcends fashion’s fluctuations, “the buzzwords of sustainability, eco-friendly and recycling are not new,” she says, “they have always been part of our existence, our traditions and our soil.”

Bilgrami’s person and art embody a groundedness that fuels all ventures. Her exploration of indigo reflects this profound connection to the earth and its roots. In this pursuit of tracing and harnessing the origin of materials, she travelled to Japan to research the journey of the ancient dye. “I was so inspired by the whole plant, its manifestation and the making of the dye.”

Her pursuit of understanding the origins of the material allows for a deeper connection with the material itself, and today, “working with indigo on paper, the layers each brushstroke produces have made this the closest medium for personal expression.” In Japan, Bilgrami learned “the sensibilities of understanding the aesthetics and going into the essence of materiality,” she explained, “There is a duality in Japan: the side which yearns for physical beautification and eyelid surgeries coexists with the underlying respect for nature, the arts, the elders and the teachers.”

Hence, within the greenery of Sri Lanka, the red soil of Hyderabad, and the gardens of Japan, what is her relationship with Karachi? She chuckles, “Karachi’s energy is like no other. It’s alive. It’s resilient. People have their lives eroded; they face the most difficult of circumstances, yet they keep going.”

This resilience found its way into her art and into her life, as she narrates an incident that directly informed her work. “Near the highway, there were a lot of Afghan women whose land was suddenly taken away. Amidst the bulldozed remains of their homes, I saw the women rummaging through the rubble to pull out whatever they could, remnants of their lives buried under the rocks.”

She took that helplessness and began tearing paper, cloth, and bandages, a physical response that culminated in her collage work, eventually creating a piece called ‘Crying for the Light’. Acutely self-aware, she acknowledges “the self-indulgence and privilege that allow for such a visceral outlet to express my feelings.”

The resilience she learnt from this city has enriched all aspects of her life, personal and professional. The balance she cultivated has guided her throughout, particularly when navigating the demands of work, family and personal time. “It has always been a part of my existence. I was studying when I got married at 20, had my daughter Sarah at 21, and I never stopped working.”

A true Karachiite, amongst many other things, Bilgrami shows no signs of slowing down. “There’s much to discover and I need many more lives to do all that I want to do.” At this moment in time, she is determined to return to the core basics, “to work with whatever is right in front of me.” Her sights are set on Lahore, where she plans to open Koel Shop with a collection titled ‘Kora’, which means unbleached. Determined to strip away the ostentation, vibrancy and loud colours of typical clothing, she wants to challenge the noise and glitz of Lahore to “produce a collection that is basic, down to earth and bare.”

Asked about her legacy, she replies, “What legacy? I’m still living!” Thus, perhaps it is more accurate to describe Noorjehan Bilgrami’s journey as a living legacy, one that continues to evolve and inspire. The creative process never ends; her legacy is not something static or confined to the past; it is a living entity that grows and transforms with each new experience and act of creation.