MF Husain: Remembering the modern master on his 10th death anniversary

From a hole-in-the-wall Bhendi Bazaar eatery where you can run into a Husain sketch to Mid-day’s own special connection with the master painter, here are some colourful facts about his life and times

A barefoot man, with pristine white hair and beard, dressed mostly in kurtas and clutching a long wooden paintbrush — always prepared to draw anything that took his fancy. This is how a lot of people likely remember the legendary Maqbool Fida Husain. Some liked to refer to the late artist, among the most expensive Indian artists globally, as the ‘Picasso of India’. 

As one of the founding members of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, the Pandharpur-born painter has been credited with modernising the art scene in the country. But over the course of his illustrious career, he gained a fair share of admirers and critics. The harsh criticism and threats he faced for nude depictions of Hindu goddesses compelled him to leave the country in 2006. He moved to Qatar and in 2010 was given citizenship there. Husain would never return to India again but arguments surrounding his exile continued for years after his demise on June 9, 2011. Mumbai, despite his many travels around the world, is known to have remained the main object of his affection.

Ten years after his passing, we remember the iconic painter and some memorable facts about him. 

Food and Husain

“Give me good food, give me good music and then watch how I function on canvas! My brush will move according to the beat of the music and to the lingering tastes of that exquisite meal,” Husain had told Sahapedia. The artist had a few favourite food haunts in the Maximum City and he visited them regularly. One of them was Bhendi Bazaar’s landmark Noor Mohammadi restaurant. Husain was so smitten by one of their signature dishes – nalli nihari – he sketched a rooster calling out for the dish, during a visit in 2003. 

A few kilometres away, another iconic South Mumbai eatery has a Husain story. Tucked away in the lush green Mahalaxmi Race Course, Gallops was often visited by Husain. Rahul Malik, the co-owner of the restaurant, had shared with Mumbai Mirror in 2019, that the artist had once sketched on an entire table cloth. Malik had further requested him to paint something for them but unfortunately that wish was never fulfilled. 

The legend did not restrict such spontaneous artistic mementos to Mumbai restaurants. Reportedly, in the late 1990s he made a black-and-white sketch for the famous South Kolkata restaurant Azad Hind Dhaba, to which he went back and added colour years later. That painting is now famously known as ‘Gaja Gamini’ – also the name of the movie Husain directed – which depicts a woman dancing. The background is bright red and a white elephant is peeking behind the woman with its trunk held aloft. 

The movies and muses

Husain’s admiration for films and actors is well-known. He painted cinema posters early in his career. Much later, he made his own Bollywood film — ‘Gaja Gamini’ — in which he cast his muse Madhuri Dixit and Shah Rukh Khan. As reports suggest, he was so fascinated by Dixit that he booked an entire theatre to watch her 2007 comeback film ‘Aaja Nachle’. However, there were other actresses who joined Husain’s appreciation list too. 

Husain is said to have found actor Urmila Matondkar very “funny” and had plans to make a comedy film starring her. Later, he was very impressed by Amrita Rao’s simplicity and reportedly watched her film ‘Vivah’ nine times. Vidya Balan also caught Husain’s eye. He watched her film ‘Ishqiya’ 12 times and wished to make a movie with her too. 

The last actress to have caught Husain’s attention was Anushka Sharma. He was smitten by her performance in ‘Band Baja Baarat’ and had conveyed his desire to paint her portrait. 

Husain’s love for theatre

Husain had affection for Indian theatre as well. In 2011, actor Mohan Agashe had shared with Mid-day that during the 500th show of the play ‘Ghashiram Kotwal’ – written by Vijay Tendulkar – the painter had requested the producers if he could sit in the front row and sketch while the play was on. His request was accepted.
Agashe, who played Nana Phadnavis in the production, said, “Four months later, we got a call from him inviting us to see an exhibition of the Ghashiram paintings at a gallery near Fort. We were thrilled to see the works.” It did not stop there. 

When the group was invited to tour Europe, they requested Husain to paint posters, and he readily agreed. The day they were to leave, Agashe recounted, “We were performing at Kamani Auditorium in Delhi. In the intermission, Owais (Husain's son) came to us with a package and said, ‘Baba has sent this for you’. He remembered that we were leaving that night and made sure the posters reached us in time.”

Husain also had a connection with actress-director Nadira Babbar's theatre group Ekjute. He was a family friend. Once when the family wasn’t at home, Husain had visited. So, he sketched a painting on the door and left. “It was a great gesture but we were living in a rented home, and the landlord was livid when we told him we wanted to take the door with us while moving home,” Babbar had told Mid-day. Babbar and Husain stayed in touch and he even designed several posters for the theatre group. The last one he painted was in December 2010 for the play ‘Bollywood Ka Salaam’ – a tribute to Hindi Cinema of the 50s’. 

The Mid-Day connection

In 2011, senior journalist Rajona Banerji recounted that Husain was approached by the Mid-day team to do a cover for a section for Mid-day's special anniversary issue for 1995. He readily agreed. Banerji writes, “We were trying to marry short stories on Mumbai with works of art, by both well-known writers and our readers who entered a contest (looking back at the issue, I see Chandrahas Choudhury, now an acclaimed author, was a winner at 15 with his story on pollution) and by city artists.” 

When Banerji dropped by Husain’s office to pick up the painting for the cover, it wasn’t ready. “Before butterflies in the tummy could turn into wasps, the maestro picked up a sheet of art paper and some crayons and produced a masterpiece,” she wrote. 

“His firm sure lines soon gave us a portrait which contained his obsession at the time, film star Madhuri Dixit, though this was five years before the film ‘Gaja Gamini’ was released, an iconic Husain horse, the Gateway of India, the sea, a boat, a fish and you can see how it all comes together for yourself,” she wrote.

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