Meena Kumari to most, Mahjabeen to a few. The yesteryear's actress continues to remain an enigma to all, almost 37 years after her death
Meena Kumari to most, Mahjabeen to a few. The yesteryear's actress continues to remain an enigma to all, almost 37 years after her deathEVEN as her thirty-seventh death anniversary approaches on March 31, the legend of Meena Kumari continues to enthral.
Meena Kumari died on my birthday March 31. It's not just for this rather tenuous connection; Meena Kumari always fascinates me. She passed away in 1972, but she still casts a nostalgia-tinted web of entrancement. When I celebrate my birthday, I also say a silent prayer for her soul.
As a child, from snatches of adult conversations, I realised that Dilip Kumar was the anointed tragedy king and Meena Kumari, the definitive tragedy queen. She was a legend in her own lifetime Dilip Kumar in Ram Aur Shyam eulogises Meena Kumari to his cinema-illiterate mother. My first recollection of Meena Kumari on screen was as the traumatised widow in O P Ralhan's blockbuster, Phool Aur Patthar. I remember feeling acutely sorry for her when sassy Shashikala drags her to villain Madan Puri's den like a bag of loot. She seemed vulnerable till, propelled by the strong-shouldered Dharmendra's moral support, she finds her (tremulous) voice in the courtroom sequence, in which she exposes her avaricious in-laws.
She was way past her prime by then; but Meena Kumari mesmerised my young self in Phool Aur Patthar and her last few films. When Rajesh Khanna begs for her forgiveness in the song (Sab ne maaf kiya mujhko par, main hoon jiska doshi, kab tootegi uske ghaayal honthon ki khamoshi?) in Dushman, I was impressed at the way she used her empty eyes to silently signal a "never" while flipping a roti on the choola. And she made the ideal amiable nanimaa in Mere Apne, who becomes the Peacekeeping force between rival gang leaders Shatrughan and Vinod Khanna.
(Aside: She played the white-haired Nanimaa when she was just 39 years old and according to her sister Khurshid, it amused Meena Kumari no end to think, 'Maine apni jawani mein hi budhapa dekh liya. Meri zindagi ka koi bharosa nahin. But now I'll no longer regret not living till I grow old'. Poignantly, she passed away within months of Mere Apne's release.)
I saw Meena Kumari's best work after her death. During my ISC vacations (among the best six months of my life), I saw countless matinee shows of repeat-run movies in a clutch of cheek-by-jowl theatres Swastik, Imperial, Novelty, Naaz. It was my self-planned black-and-white film festival featuring Madhubala, Vyjayanthimala, Nargis, Sadhana, Meena Kumari, Dev, Dilip, Raj. I was overwhelmed by Meena in Baiju Bawra, Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi, Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see Meena Kumari match madcap Kishore Kumar, antic for antic, in Miss Mary; flail her kerchief while letting out a 'Wai wai' whoop in Yahudi's 'Meri jaan, meri jaan' and do the jive with Shammi Kapoor in Memsaheb's 'Kehta hai dil tum ho mere liye' this made me realise that the Tragedy Queen tag unjustly circumscribed her oeuvre. She was a versatile actress, who could play the serene Tulsi-watering mother figure in 'Jyoti kalash chhalke' in Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan as well as a tawaif dancing to the tinkling sound of asharfis being lavished on her in Pakeezah.
Besides these enduring screen images, I was interested in meeting and knowing Mahjabeen, alias Meena Kumari, as a person. The legend, the repertoire, the rumours, had all created intrigue about her. There had to be more to her than the oft-repeated controversies. But she had passed away by the time I entered journalism. In 1982, a decade after Meena Kumari had died, I met the veteran actress Nadira, who was one of the few for whom I instantly added the appellate 'ji'. And for the next two decades, whenever we met, she told me stories about Meena Kumari. While the ice melted in her whiskey glass, tears would quietly stream down Nadira's eyes as she flashbacked about her Meena appa.
Nadira told me, "If I were to describe her in two words, she was 'Afsana Pasand'. She led her whole life following crooked shadows, mirages. She never touched reality and that is why (probably) she drank herself to everlasting oblivion. We lived together in Kashmir in the same houseboat for Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi. And for months, Gulab Mahal and Meena Bazaar (Pakeezah's sets) had become my permanent address. But I can never claim to know Manju, Mahjabeen, Meena Kumariu00a0... she was a dream, a fairy tale."
In 1997, when I brought out a special on Meena Kumari to commemorate her twenty-fifth death anniversary, I assigned half-a-dozen capable colleagues to bring to life the myriad images of Meena Kumari in the tribute.
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Nadira said, "Only 25 years have passed since Meena Kumari stopped breathing at St Elizabeth's Nursing Home.
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With a countless number of tubes and pipes inside her, edema had already set into her lungs, she suddenly got up, snatched and threw them out of her gave up. I collapsed."
Kamal Amrohi, her mentor and estranged husband, had earlier observed, "Even if you entered a room suddenly and shouted, she'd slowly turn her head to look. Perhaps this explains the control she could exercise over her roles."
This control was Meena's histrionic hallmark in her better films. Watch her in Aarti in which Pradeep Kumar serenades her beauty with 'Ab kya misaal doon main tumhare shabab ki' she waits to assimilate each shair before reacting to it. She was obviously a thinking actress despite her lack of education.
Her sister Khurshid revealed, "Meena couldn't go to school and regretted the fact. Meena, however, educated herself. She read and wrote a great deal. She would write ghazals and recite them to me. Whenever she read a good novel she would narrate it to Chhoti (Madhu) and me. I can recall one couplet she used to recite, among hosts ofu00a0 others. It was:
'Chaand tanha
Aasman tanha
Jism tanha aur jaan tanha
Zindagi kya isi ko kehte hain?'"u00a0
One can almost hear her famous voice reciting this. Meena's voice was one of the prominent aspects of her persona. She could make the railway timetable sound like Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat. Shah Rukh pointed out to me, "Depending upon the way Meena Kumari used her voice, she could be different things to different people a mother, a sister, a daughter, a beloved."
A shayara at heart, Meena released an album 'I write I recite' with music director Khayyam. The composer remembers, "Inspite of her failing health, she did umpteen rehearsals. It was a success with poetry lovers."
But despite her many successes, there was an all-pervasive melancholy onscreen and off. Constant co-star Pradeep Kumar had said, "After she left Kamal saab things turned topsy turvy for her. I told her, 'Meena once you have drifted, you must reach a shore.' But she never did. She was always in a depressed state, a state of inner sorrow."
A close friend and ardent admirer of Meena Kumari, Kumar had raved about her performance in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam. "In the scenes where she was supposed to look drunk, it looked as though all of Meena's inner shikayat (complaint), her inner gham (sorrow) were pouring out."
Rekha, as a giggly teenager, had often dropped in on the senior actress who was a neighbour. Giving a rare insight into Meena's house, she had told me, "Behind the bedstead in her room, there was a collection of stones, shells and an album with dried leaves. I could identify with her because I too was proud of the shells I had collected. I always saw her scribbling in her diary in her shaky handwriting. She would recite high funda Urdu shayari and it used to go full toss over my head."
But subconsciously Rekha did get influenced by her Meena words. She told Rekha: 'A woman (and not just a man) is known by her craft.' She also confided in her, 'Zindagi mein akela chalna padta hai'."
It seems Meena Kumari was finally a woman who lived her life on her own termsu2026 even if she paid the price for it.
Sawan Kumar Tak shot some scenes of his Gomti Ke Kinare with Meena when she was almost bed-ridden. He said, "I was hesitant to approach her because I was concerned about her health but she was very keen. Before the shot, I had to actually hold her upright; and when the cameras were switched on, I would duck down."
But no story of Meena Kumari is complete without the mention of her final triumph, which, ever-dramatic, she snatched from the jaws of death u2014 her swan song, the epic love story Pakeezah.
Because of her separation from Amrohi, the film had been stalled in the sixties. The credit of reviving its shooting goes to Sunil Dutt, who saw the rushes and told Meena, 'You must complete the film'. During the dubbing she was almost in her last stages. The famous dialogue 'Har tawaif ek laash hain. Tu bhi ek laash hai, main bhi ek laash hoon u2026' was a difficult piece, but though breathless, she gave her best. When she finally saw Pakeezah, she was overjoyed and told Kamal: 'Shahakaar ban gaya'.
The jigsaw puzzle that was Meena Kumari will probably always remain unsolved. What was behind that evocative air of wistfulness and romantic longing? But that adds to her appeal: Has anyone else ever looked so beautiful with tears in her eyes?
