The closest I am likely to get to heaven was over forty years ago. I found myself alone in a room with Meena Kumari. All five minutes of it. It was in an office, not a bedroom. Still. She was not as pretty as, say, Madhubala, but she was the most sensual woman I have ever met. The secret lay in those magnificent eyes and a voice that magically combined come-hither with an aching sadness. By the time I met her she was a wreck, but, my word, what a gorgeous wreck she was!
Some of you have probably seen Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam a dozen times. See it again. In the sequence in which she tries to lure her husband’s affections through a love potion, she is covered from neck to ankle but oozes more sex than the semi-clad bimbos who gyrate on multiplex screens today. “I have not seen in Indian cinema a face more beautiful than I saw in those few seconds,” writes Vinod Mehta in this fine biography of the actress.
Three women held the centrestage in our films six decades ago—Nargis, Madhubala and Meena Kumari. All three started off as child artistes, providing meal tickets for their impoverished Muslim families. Of the three, Meena Kumari’s story is the most tragic. Mahajabeen, her real name, was born in a tenement in Bombay that was “spectacularly unfit for human living”. She was an unwanted child, her parents desired a son. She started working from the age of seven.
Meena Kumari blossomed late. In her earlier films—most of them cheaply produced mythologicals—she looks quite plain. As Mehta puts it, “She did not have a pretty face, she had something much better—an interesting face, and it became even more interesting when she reached the age of thirty”. Once she was in the right hands, she became a remarkable performer. In 1962, three of her films competed against each other for Filmfare’s best actress award, a feat unequalled till today.
Everyone exploited this woman: first her parents, then her siblings and husband and finally her numerous lovers. The husband, Kamal Amrohi, was also physically abusive and jealous of her success. Meena Kumari earned enormous amounts of money, but typically saw little of it. One day, when she came home hungry after a film shoot, she had to send her servant next door to borrow slices of bread.
In his later life she drank heavily, hiding the liquor in Dettol bottles. When Meena Kumari died of cirrhosis of the liver in March 1972, no relative came forward to pay the Rs 3,500 owed to the hospital. It was left to her kind doctor to settle the bill.
To Mehta’s eternal regret, he never laid eyes on Meena Kumari in real life. That is, perhaps, to his advantage in this project. Mehta was not overly bewitched by her and it helps him write a no-holds-barred biography, warts and all. The book starts out somewhat unsteadily, but once the author picks up speed the reader is hooked.
This page-turner is a reprint. When it was first published in 1972 it was priced at five rupees. This time around it is Rs 350. C’est la vie!
(Bhaichand Patel is the author of the Bollywood-based novel, Mothers, Lovers and Other Strangers)
