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Indian Woman Chooses Role of Career Artist

[[Image, center left]]
CAREER ARTIST-Indian artist Zarina pauses for a moment in the Manhattan apartment of her diplomat husband before resuming her travels. She is shown with some of her works including, at left, a combined media print; at right, a silk screen print; behind her, a tapestry she designed.

By LUISE PUTCAMP JR.
For AP Newsfeatures
NEW YORK (AP)- Zarina is packing again. She stuffs papers into a striped, woven bag. "My filing cabinet," says the Indian artist wryly. Into her new Honda, Zarina will put this and a portfolio of prints and her print-making tools. And a few saris.
Then she'll head once more into strange country.
Zarina will be leaving behind a posh Manhattan apartment with many rooms, two house-boys and a view of the East River.
In Los Angeles, she'll live in one room on a modest street. (Nearby is India Ink Gallery, first to show Zarina's work in this country. She has friends there.)
The Manhattan pad is home for Zarina's husband, who is a career diplomat.
Zarina has no home, she says. She's a career artist.
She has been an artist almost as long as she's been a wife. Her woodprints and silk screen prints have hung in Inida, Greece, Norway, Japan, Poland, West Germany - and here. Her art has won Zarina awards and brought her (some) money. 
Zarina is a small, dark woman who likes French movies, often wears blue jeans and sometimes practices yoga. She can converse in five languages and cook in several.
Her problems are not exotic. Women and artists who aren't Indian will recognize many of them.
As a little girl in Aligarh, India, Zarina was determined "to be my own person, and to be an artist."
But the stern-visaged Moslem professor, her father, suffered her to study mathematics, instead. Then Zarina's marriage was arranged - to a boy she'd known most of her life.
"I thought marriage would be like a long date," mused Zarina, 17 years later. "I didn't realize it would mean always doing what the other person wanted, thinking what he thought, seeing people he wanted to see."
Zarina's Indian husband was "posted" in Bangkok. There, in 1958, she made her first print, from a laboriously carved linoleum block, under the dining room table.
Zarina's husband was sent next to Paris. There, in 1964, at the atelier of S.W. Hayter, printmakers' printmaker, she began learning - and unlearning.
And her husband's indulgences had turned to disapproval.
One day Zarina told her husband: "I'm leaving."
The darkly handsome diplomat was reasonable. "But how can you?" he said. "We're having a dinner party tonight!"
Zarina flew off to London. She wore a Courreges coat - with no money in the pockets. She was hungry. She was cold. But she told herself: "No man will ever again interfere with my life and tell me what to do!"
It was in New Delhi, in 1968, Zarina says, that "my life as an artist really began."
She rented a studio. This was not something a proper Indian wife does. (Unbidden, a solicitous concierge screened her callers.)
Zarina held Sunday soirees. "Everybody came," she says. "Even my husband. Bringing his friends."
Zarina tried tapestry design. People and institutions brought her large tapestries. She tried sculpture. A pipe company put Zarina's waving forest of flexible metal in the middle of its exposition pavilion.
And Zarina never stopped making prints.
Some in a New Delhi gallery caught the eye of Joan P. Miller of Los Angeles. She was in India on a buying trip for her gallery. She demanded to meet the artist.
India Ink Gallery held Zarina shows in 1973 and 1974, her first in this country. It will hold another in October. This summer, galleries in New York City and San Francisco showed Zarina's newest work.
She calls it "white-on-white." Remote, ironic, it shows some symbols of some women's lives. A baby bottle. A spool of thread.
And some symbols of Zarina's life. A crumpled paper. ("Letter To You.") An empty picture frame. ("Family Portrait.")

Late 70's?