Meena kumari : the classic biography

185 Pages·2013·1.21 MB·English

by  Vinod Mehta

MEENA KUMARI
Vinod Mehta
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HarperCollins Publishers India
To Meena Kumari – wish I had known you
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Nobody is perfect.
– Last line in Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot
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Contents
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Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements to the Original Edition
Introduction to the New Edition
Section One
Lies
Birth
Rise
Fall
Pakeezah
Death
Section Two
PERSONAL APPRAISAL
How I Got to Know Her
The Actress
The Woman
Index
About the Author
Praise for the Book
Copyright
Footnotes
Acknowledgements to the
Original Edition
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H
e would be a brave, possibly foolish man who would write a book on Meena
Kumari without the necessary escape clause. For myself, at every stage in the
writing I found that it was impossible to collect even one ‘undisputed’ fact about
this woman. Everything connected with her life had at least four versions. So I am
sure lots of people will find enough material in this biography to complain, ‘No,
no, he’s got it all wrong. It is not pineapple juice she liked but orange juice.’ I have
no defence against such complaints.
However, I am greatly beholden to the many people who made this book
possible. To most of them I was a complete stranger—and film people are not
over-renowned for welcoming strangers. Nevertheless, I was frequently made
welcome and my queries were amplified and answered with patience and courtesy.
From among those who aided me, I would like to single out Mr Devi Dutt
(Guru Dutt’s youngest brother) who was of immense help. Arun Varma is the
other person I would publicly like to thank.
Also deserving my thanks are those who supplied the photographs that
illustrate this book. Mr Ramesh Madholkar, Mr Shiraj Chawda, Mr A.L. Syed and
others who prefer to remain anonymous.
Finally, I must say thank you to my publishers. They accepted, without
inserting a comma, my way of doing this book and gave me the sort of editorial
freedom I frankly did not expect.
Vinod Mehta
Introduction to the New Edition
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M
eena Kumari died of cirrhosis of the liver (precipitated by excessive drinking)
in March 1972. I was still working as a copywriter in an advertising agency, and
going nowhere. With the false bravado which comes easily to a person who has
achieved little, I accepted the commission from Jaico and duly delivered the
finished manuscript in October 1972. The biography, published in paperback and
priced Rs 5, appeared a couple of weeks later.
Meena’s husband’s magnum opus—Pakeezah—fourteen years in the making and
vulnerable to the turbulence of their rocky marriage, had hit the screen in February
1972. Pakeezah opened at Maratha Mandir in Mumbai to a distinctly lukewarm
response at the box office and from critics. Immediately after her death, however, a
box office miracle occurred. You couldn’t get tickets. The film became a roaring
hit. Wild rumours abuzz at the time hinted that Kamal Amrohi had arranged the
timing of her widely anticipated demise in order to rescue his tottering film.
Homage to the famously tortured star was doubtless the prime reason for the film’s
reversal in fortunes.
I got a few good reviews, particularly from K.A. Abbas in Blitz, but I have to
admit I was slightly embarrassed with my effort. Besides the subject of the
biography being unavailable, I was ditched by the man who callously used and
discarded her, Dharmendra. He gave me many appointments, none of which he
kept. Somebody familiar with the film world said to me as a complaint, ‘How can
you write a biography of Meena Kumari without talking to Dharmendra?’ True. Mr
D was the love of her life. His absence from my script constituted a big void.
One other reason for my discomfiture. Because I was new at the writing game, I
had few original or interesting ideas. The ones I did have were stolen, mostly from
Mr Norman Mailer, who had not yet produced his tribute to Marilyn Monroe.
Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Armies of the Night was all the rage in the early
1970s. In a sense he created a new journalistic genre, which allowed the author to
place himself at the core of his narrative. It was a highly personalized rendering in
which the word ‘I’ appears rather too often, while objectivity pops up rather too
rarely. It still remained journalism but heavily author-centric. I lapped it up. At that
formative stage of my writing career, my susceptibility to trendy literary
movements and the fancy mode of expression of Anglo-Saxon writers should come
as no surprise.
Although I have been an editor for nearly four decades, as a consequence of
which my job almost on a daily basis involves grading manuscripts, I am a very
poor judge of my own work. I need someone whose opinion I value to tell me
whether I have written bullshit or a masterpiece. The feedback I got on my portrait
of Meena Kumari went thus: I had produced an over-sentimental, maudlin life story
compromised by the gratuitous insertion of my own personality into the narrative.
A cooler, detached view would have improved the biography immeasurably.
For the past ten years, more than one publisher has approached me with the
offer of reissuing the book, with perhaps a fresh introduction. I have resisted the
offers since I was not sure my biography merited the honour. Truth to tell, I had
forgotten I had ever written such a book. More pressing matters—like learning the
nuts and bolts of editorship—engaged me. Indeed, I did not even possess a copy
of the book, neither did I know or care whether there had been a second print.
The biography was part of my mediocre past.
After my memoir Lucknow Boy appeared, for the first time in nearly forty years I
reread what I had written in 1972. All the solecisms and structural weaknesses were
cringingly visible, but—how can I put this?—it was not as bad as I had thought.
My self-created proximity to the subject posed an obvious and clear danger.
Nevertheless, despite the naivety and exhibitionism and hurried judgements, I
thought I had managed to capture some fleeting essence of the controversial
actress. Was I being overgenerous to my own work? Perhaps. However, you must
remember that in 1972 biographies of film stars were few and far between and
those which existed were hagiographies. At least, I was able to puncture a few
myths regarding the ‘great tragedienne’. Most of Meena Kumari’s multiple woes
were self-inflicted as she convinced herself she was unfairly exploited and betrayed
by her lovers and lady luck.
The ‘great tragedienne’, as the media called her, began to subscribe to her on-
screen persona; it merged faultlessly with her unhappy real life. She fell for the