'My subject is woman'

M F Husain, in many ways, defines modern Indian painting. He has also dabbled in film-making, poetry, religion and philosophy. K Bikram Singh, a personal friend of the artist, writes about the man and his art in this latest tome. Here’s an extract

During the mid-1950s and the 1960s, Husain was also changing as a person. On one hand he was moving from poverty to relative prosperity and, on the other, he was attracting fame and female admirers.

During his childhood and youth, Husain had received very little companionship of women. His mother had died when he was an infant. During his boyhood in Indore, he had unsuccessful and one-sided crushes on two girls, Jamuna and Batul... A few years later... he had fallen in love with Suraiya, another story of unrequited love as Suraiya got married to a person in Pakistan.

 

Once Husain came to Bombay, for several years he was too busy with the problems of survival to take any interest in women. It was his need for home that had prompted him to marry Fazila. Husain, therefore, had never found an opportunity to look at a woman as an object of desire, romance and passionate love. This opportunity came to him in 1956.

Husain told me the story of his love for Maria or rather Marie Jaroslav Zourkova, sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Hyderabad in November 2005. In 1956, he was invited to exhibit in a gallery in Prague. Husain reached Prague about three weeks earlier as he wanted to paint some paintings in Prague itself rather than carry everything from India.

Maria, a linguist with a strong interest in theology, Oriental studies and Western classical music, was attached to him as an interpreter. Husain’s English was still hesitant but he had a strong grounding in Indian mythology, folklore, Indian art and everything Indian that would appeal to a European.

Soon enough the two came close. Through her, Husain began to appreciate Western music and to understand the Western mind. Maria gained an insight into India through a gifted but a non-Westernised Indian.

At the opening of his show, Husain announced that no painting was for sale as he had gifted all the 32 paintings to Maria. “I used to write a letter to Maria everyday on my return to India,” Husain told me. His knowledge of English grammar was weak and his feelings for Maria were strong.

These could not be expressed through his English prose. Thus his feelings found expression in the form of poetry. It was his letters to Maria that Husain first started composing verses in English that Maria found full of rich visuals and deeper meanings.

Husain went to Prague over the next several years. Even marriage was seriously discussed between the two. His passion for Maria was so strong that Husain had even offered to divorce his wife and had persuaded one of his friends to temporarily marry Fazila, so that he could perhaps remarry her after a ritual gap as prescribed in Islam and after his marriage with Maria.

Unfortunately, the differences in their backgrounds were enormous. Maria was a European and a Christian. Husain was an Indian and a traditional Muslim. Maria was not prepared to shift to India and Husain was not ready to leave India.

It is a tragic irony that nearly 50 years after this incident, in early 2006, Husain was forced to leave India and go into exile because of the numerous court cases that were filed against him by some Hindu fundamentalists who claimed that Husain’s paintings had hurt their religious feelings.

The love affair finally came to an end in 1964 when Maria got married to Jans Dottier, an Icelandic young man studying in Prague. However, the friendship of Maria and Husain continued.

Husain attended Maria’s wedding and when the couple decided to migrate to Australia and wanted to carry Husain’s paintings with them, Husain specially went to Prague to carry the paintings for them through the customs.

In September 2005, when Husain celebrated his 90th birth anniversary, he visited Maria and her husband in Australia. A year later in August 2006, when Maria decided to return to her home in the Czech Republic, she gave back to Husain all the paintings which were then worth several million dollars.

When I went to Dubai in February 2007 to meet Husain, I found about 60 of these paintings displayed in a section of his house there. This is a love story that is a stuff of fiction. But then Husain’s whole life — his rise from the pavements of Bombay to an art icon of international stature — also seems to belong to the world of fiction.

It was perhaps this love for Maria that changed Husain’s way of looking at women and helped him arrive at one of the most important themes of his career as an artist: Woman. Shrikant Verma, a well-known Hindi writer and a friend of Husain, relates an interesting story about Husain’s fascination for women.

A well-known Indian painter had once declared that the subject of his painting was “Man”. Husain heard this story. So when he was asked by a foreign art enthusiast what the subject of his painting was, he remarked, “My subject is woman”... When the foreigner enquired why, Husain shot back, “Because I am not a pervert.”

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MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN 
Author: K Bikram Singh
Publisher: Rahul & Art
Pages: 394