Splash Window Painting

Going away barefoot

“The day I stop painting I will stop existing,” was the artaholic’s refrain. “In any case, I have still not completed as many paintings as Picasso.”

A year ago, suffering from acute back pain in London, he was rushed to an acupuncturist. A month’s  rest was advised. He mumbled, “Yes, yes,” to the specialist, but zipped off to attend an art gallery party, carrying his security prop — a long, black paintbrush. If he approved of a soiree, he’d gift the brush to the host.

If he didn't, he would complain, “I should have tickled the double chins of those society ladies with the brush. Phir, kuch to mazaa aata.”

Maqbool Fida Husain was amused by the grandeur of his name, often elocuting it with a sing-song lilt, and he’d admit that he had dropped an ‘s’ from the Husain. The second ‘s’ looked cluttered visually.

That classic artist’s struggle against abject poverty had made him a man. A khichdi vendor would give him a discounted dinner. And the stone footpaths of Mumbai's red-light district, Falkland Road, would serve as his bed.

At a furlong’s distance, Badar Bagh, a colony of matchbox-like rooms, he would paint film posters, and nervously romanced Fazila bi who became his wife. She would leave a bright red soap dish on a window sill to signal that she was at home alone.

He would remember, “On my wedding night before I removed my bride’s dupatta, I fell on my knees to ask the lord for kindness and mercy. My prayers were answered. I went on to become the father of four sons and two daughters.”

On achieving iconhood, Husain would make it a point to visit the bagh, celebrate every Ramzan Eid there with a brunch where celebrities and the Baadrites co-mingled. The Eid namaaz was followed by biryani, kababs and sheer khorma, shy women in burqas chatted with movie heroines in chiffons, but he never sketched or painted that neighbourhood.

Certain areas of his life were sacrosanct.

Overwhelmingly, though, Husain did share the lasting pain of losing his mother when he was just an infant. In every woman he painted, he saw the mother figure, draped in a nine-yard-sari, her face never disclosing any emotion. Perhaps that’s why women are rarely endowed with eyes, clearly, in his oeuvre.

He may have shocked purists by going fida over Madhuri Dixit, it was felt that he was encashing on the Bollywood ticket. He wasn’t. No one knew that in his crumpled leather wallet, he kept a folded pencil drawing of Ms Dixit, feeding her first-born child. For him a woman was a mother, a goddess.

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