Speaking with Subhash K Jha, noted actress Shabana Azmi remembers the great artist MF Hussain on his death anniversary.
The walls of your home are a testimony to your closeness to MF Hussain Saab?
You have seen how many Hussains there are in my home.
Yes, if you sell them, you would be one of the richest women in India?
Are you mad? Shubh shubh bolo. Why would I sell them? Each one is a piece of my heart. No riches in the world can pay for them. MF Husain. Hussain Saab will always have a place in my heart. I learnt a lot from him.
He was unusually flamboyant?
Why not? Why should a true artist always be expected to be in rags? Hussain Saab was wealthy, and he really looked after his entire family, his children, and grandchildren.
How would you describe Husain Saab?
I’d say he’s a product of India’s composite culture. He grew up in a deeply cosmopolitan household. His mother used to wear a traditional nine-yard saree. He made Madhuri Dixit wear the nine-yard saree in Gaja Gamini. It’s hard to associate old age and death with him. He had such childlike qualities about him that I had somehow convinced myself he would remain a child forever.
Your most vivid memory of the barefooted painter?
I remember the time when he got a cheque for Rs100 crore for his painting. He came running to my house to show it like a child who had just got a Playstation … He was an iconoclast and a genius. But more than that, he was a wonderful human being.
Would you describe him as a close friend?
In spite of being so much older than me, he was a very close friend. First, he was my father (the late poet Kaifi Azmi)’s friend, then mine. Husain Saab was in the habit of walking in and out of my house at any hour, regardless of whether we were at home or not. He did a portrait of Abba (father Kaifi Azmi) and two huge paintings that occupy a pride of place in my home.
I believe your friendship with Husain Saab went far beyond Mumbai?
In whichever city we met up, he would take me to the inner side of the cities, the dhabas, etc. In Kolkata when I was shooting for The City Of Joy, he announced he was coming to pick me up. I’d request Husain Saab to please explain art to me. ‘Main art nahin samajhti hoon’. He used to say. ‘You’ve to do nothing. Dekho aur mehsoos karo,’ he would say. Husain loved this country so much … What a sad loss for India that someone of Husain’s calibre had to be exiled and had to die away from his home.
