On Madhuri Dixit’s 49th birthday, here’s a glimpse into her biggest fan and iconic painter M F Husain’s autobiography, that reveals how the artist came to admire and celebrate his muse.
Year: 1994. Venue Hotel Juhu Centaur on the beachfront. It’s the glittering-slithering night of the Filmfare Awards. Camouflaging a frown, I reached the event with Jaya Bachchan and Parmeshwar Godrej.
I was experiencing the glare of the Bollywood spotlight for the first time. To my horror, I was called on stage to announce the winner of the Best Actress Award. I opened the envelope, read the name of the winner, Madhuri Dixit, pausing before announcing the name because I hadn’t seen any of her films. I would close my ears to her song, Ek Do Teen whenever it blared from the street’s loudspeakers. Reason: I was fixated on the songs-dances-and-prances of Sridevi.
Disappointed that Sridevi wasn’t the winner, I muttered, “And the award goes to Madhuri Dixit for Beta.”
Thunderous applause. Madhuri stood close to me, cinema met art, the actress and the artist performed their numbers, exuding cordiality for all of two minutes. Flashbulbs popped till the photographers dropped. “Yeh Husain paagal ho gaya hai,” tongues wagged.
After that, we didn’t meet for more than a year There was no need to. But then cinema and art aren’t mutually exclusive. Then one day this girl swung her hips coquettishly, singing Didi Tera Devar Deewana…The film was Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! I was told, like a temple Devadasin she’d taken five steps backwards to shake those dynamite hips.
Snobbishly, I’d harrumphed, “Oh, she’s just another Bollywood bombshell.” I went to see the film almost at gunpoint. Sure, I’d always nursed a soft corner for the peppy Geeta Bali and Mumtaz and had watched Chandni 15 times over purely for Sridevi’s tandav. So for heaven’s sake what could be special about this Madhuri girl?
Cinematically Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! was no great shakes but she was wow. I was literally dancing in the aisles. Every evening in every town in every part of the world, I saw the film repeatedly. Even my closest friends were convinced that I’d finally gone senile. Acres of newsprint were wasted on my lunacy. I persisted in dating her unapologetically, on the 35 mm screen.
A journalist harassed me for my statement that she would now be present in all my paintings . “But where is she?” the trouble-maker persisted, clueless about the fact that my canvases never show the woman’s face. When the journalist brought this up with Madhuri, she replied,”Husainji isn’t painting my portraits per se, he’s conveying the essence of an actress.”
To be honest, around then I wasn’t keen at all to meet Madhuri in person. My paintings sought to go beyond her screen image, I was trying to touch the very core of the Indian woman. I didn’t want to be disappointed on meeting her, once again after that Filmfare Awards Night.
Unexpectedly, there was a phone call from chez La Dixit. I was invited to her Juhu home for tea. The meeting lasted till breakfast. Before leaving, I told her that while watching Hum Aapke Hain Koun...! in an Ahmedabad cinema hall, I’d thrown my paint brush at her on the screen, the way the devout shower marigold flowers upon an idol. The cinema’s manager had returned the brush, saying, “Whenever you meet Madhuri, give the brush to her with your own hands.”
As soon as I handed the brush to her, she laughed, “Husainji, are you sure? If you leave the brush with me, I could start painting too.” Quick on the uptake, I said, “If you start painting, I might just make a film with you.”
This, I said on May 7th, 1995. On July 10th, 1998, Madhuri faced the camera for Gaja Gamini at Mehboob studios. The film was about the limitless facets of the Indian woman. She can be Premchand’s Nirmala, Tagore’s Abhisarika, Manto’s Sandhu and Kalidas’ Shakuntala.
In Madhuri, above all I saw my mother in the midst of a village fair, carrying a basket by her hip. The six-month-old Maqbool Fida Husain was sleeping in that basket, wrapped in a grimy sheet of cloth. The film, a tribute to my mother who died when I was an infant, was completed despite the stress of the Bollywood-style of functioning. There were days when I felt suicidal. I was mortally afraid that I wouldn’t wake up to see the next morning.
Yet, the pain was alloyed with pleasure. An impromptu solo dance by Madhuri to the rhythm of drums, carried me to the highest planes of ecstasy.
The day, the last shot of the film was canned, Yash Chopra was the first one to call and boom, “Congratulations! Congratulations not for the film’s completion but for coming out of Bollywood, alive.”
Years after Gaja Gamini was released, the art fraternity would ask me, “How come she’s still in your paintings? We don’t see much of her, anywhere else, nowadays.” To that my reply was, “She married Dr Shriram Nene and has left for Colorado. She’s so far and yet so close.”
(Excerpted from M F Husain’s autobiography Where Art Thou, transliterated by Khalid Mohamed)
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