UPPER CUT: Mohiley takes less than a minute to make a subject's profile

An elderly man with a straggly beard, long, spindly fingers and a pair of scissors. An artist. A non-believer in the conventional. Ramesh Mohiley, 68, a longtime fixture of Kabir Chauraha in Varanasi, has an unusual talent. All he needs is a bit of paper. As his scissors fly across it, the rhythmic snipping reveals a startling likeness of just about anything or anyone. And this is his life, as well as his livelihood.

Portraits, profiles, landscapes and still life-all that a brush and paint can do, he can do with an interesting twist. The most striking are the single-cut portraits. Made by cutting out the essential features of a face on a piece of dark paper and pasting this on to a light coloured one, what emerges is a striking two-toned likeness that would put many sketches to shame. Famous faces, mostly from Mohiley's home state Uttar Pradesh-Amitabh Bachchan, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Madan Mohan Malviya and Swami Vivekananda-come alive with an almost three dimensional effect (the portrait of G.D. Birla that emerged from Mohiley's scissors was enthusiastically snapped up by the Birlas). The nimble fingers and the trusty blades also produce craftily detailed miniatures, such as one showing a riverbank scene in Varanasi, complete with subtle details like the fruitbasket in front of a fruit seller, the ragged fur of a stray dog and the rudraksh beads on a sadhu. And they can conjure out of blank paper an exquisitely intricate cutwork design to be used as a template for textile printing.

Mohiley is the complete creative character-he has a flair for music and theatre apart from the scissors. Indeed, he describes his work in the terminology of music: "Just as you can take the seen notes and create a million symphonies by using different combinations, I use a set of 25 basic motifs to create innumerable cutouts." But why scissors when the creative possibilities of paints and brushes are so vast? "There is a magic in working with scissors," says Mohiley. "There is a sharpness to the lines I create with it that the brush can't replicate." Nor can an ordinary pair of scissors. Mohiley has a set of six, self-designed implements, hand moulded by a blacksmith friend in Varanasi. The blades are carefully crafted and use a combination of hard steel and softer iron to blend flexibility with the capacity to produce different kinds of cuts-long and straight, short, superfine jagged edges or intricate wavy cuts.

And how did the magic begin? Long ago in pre-Independence Allahabad. Mohiley had his first brush with the possibilities of a pair of scissors as a seven-year-old, chafing at the rules of a strict Saraswat Brahmin family. One day when he wasn't allowed to go out and play, the sharp scissors his uncle used for clipping his moustache beckoned, and all he needed was a sheet of paper. His effort got him into trouble, but also helped him discover what would one day become his calling.

Never interested in studies, despite a natural ability for handling machinery, Mohiley's formal education came to an end after high school. Various jobs followed. But his creative side was too dominant to allow him to work at a conventional career for long. His love of music, theatre and art was a constant distraction (flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia is a childhood friend-the two would constantly get into trouble with Mohiley's mother for forgetting errands while performing "jugalbandi" at the "chowk"). A chance encounter with an architect who saw his cutouts changed everything. He was given first professional cutout assignment-the decorations for a pavilion during an exhibition at Delhi's Pragati Maidan in the early 1980s. Hundreds of cutouts followed, including about 40 portraits. Such a body of work could not go unnoticed for long and this year, the Taj Ganges hotel at Varanasi hosted an exhibition of his work which was attended by the Tibetan lama, the Karmapa. It was here that the Birla portrait was noticed by the family.

But surely such an unusual art form should not die out. Mohiley agrees. The response to an earlier exhibition in Jaipur was so encouraging that a workshop was organised, and about 60 enthusiasts enrolled. The workshop was so successful that another exhibition, consisting entirely of the work of the participants, was also well attended. "I don't have the resources to set up a school," says Mohiley, "but those who are interested can come to me-I'm willing to spend as much time as is needed to teach them the art." The fee? Absolutely nothing. "When you take money for teaching, then there is no purity in the exercise. The teacher becomes a servant, a salesman. The purpose is lost. There are a few youngsters who come to me in Varanasi to learn, and I'm happy to teach them." This art exponent, it is clear, aims to be a cut above the rest.