A sliver of the afternoon sun paints a stripe across the balcony door into 91-year-old Naval Jijina's Andheri West home. But, he isn't impressed by this play in his compact drawing-cum bedroom. "It's been quite foggy," his 86-year-old wife Gool says, alluding to the hazy January sky. "…That's why he hasn't been able to paint much." A canvas stands on an old wooden easel next to the cot, characterised by a blue sky, and the earth, in shades of ochre, with specks of forest green. There's a faint outline of the hills, and the work has just begun to be peopled with figurines. Jijina, who is seated on a cushioned chair, a white cotton paghri covering his head, watches this writer observe the oil canvas, and breaks his silence for the first time since we've arrived: "It's a landscape painting." "But this is not ready," he adds in Hindi, almost imploring that we don't pass judgment on an unfinished work. The painting, Gool shares, is being done at the request of a family member. It's been keeping Jijina busy for much of his day. Sometimes, he just stares at it, waiting for the colours to form in his head and speak to him. On other days, he paints feverishly, with Indian classical music playing on his tape recorder.

Earlier this week, Jijina and Gool, herself a talented musician and self-taught artist, in a first, had the opportunity to collaborate. It's for a retrospective titled, The Music Modern on exhibit at Worli's Gallery Art & Soul. While the show is part of the Mumbai Gallery Weekend, which ends today, the display will continue till February 15. The Parsi couple, married for 51 years, is showcasing 58 of their works, of which 41 are by Jijina, and date back to the early 1960s, sometime after he graduated from Sir JJ School of Art. What makes this show unique is that Jijina is exhibiting his paintings for the first time in 48 years. His last solo was held at the erstwhile Everyman's Art Gallery in Dhobi Talao, in 1973, before the textile designer by profession, lost his job and became a recluse. Why Jijina, an abstractionist, who like his contemporaries Sayed Haider Raza and Vasudeo S Gaitonde, graduated from the Bombay Art School, and went on to vividly and boldly experiment with colour, disappeared without a trace, is a story mid-day decided to follow. We ask Jijina, who though short of hearing, has an eidetic memory. What is important, he tells us, is that he never stopped painting.