Remembering “tragedy queen” Meena Kumari on her 85th birth anniversary 

Timeless icon Meena Kumari has left a mark in Bollywood and the world as she is remembered even today, 45 years post her death.

Termed the “Tragedy Queen” of Bollywood for her immortal, iconic portrayals of a varied gamut of wronged, silent and long-suffering but dignified Indian women from passed-over love interests to neglected wives, Meena Kumari was however the most unfortunate actress whose grief did not end when the shooting was done.

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 Born to suffer?

• Born on August 1, 1933, Mahjabeen Bano (Meena kumari’s real name)saw her father Ali Bux,
• a stage artiste who never made it big in Bollywood, and mother Iqbal Begum, a stage actress,
• who was the granddaughter of Rabindranath Tagore’s younger brother) try to achieve their desires vicariously through her.
• According to a popular Bollywood legend, Meena’s father had left her at the door of an orphanage as a child.
• After some time, he returned to fetch the baby and to his shock, found ants crawling creepily all over her body.
• Furthermore,when she was only four, they started taking her around film studios angling for a role for her.
• Ultimately, director-producer Vijay Bhatt featured her the hero’s daughter in his costumed drama “Leatherface” (1939),where she was credited as “Baby Meena”.
• After a stint as a child artiste, it was Bhatt who eventually made her a household name with “Baiju Bawra”, for which she won a Filmfare Award.

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• The same year, she went on to marry filmmaker Kamal Amrohi, 15 years her senior,
• but the marriage soon went on the rocks as he tried to set rules for her film career and
• even allegedly mistreated her, and they eventually separated.

Created an undeniable legacy

• But even as her personal life went miserable, Meena Kumari went on to set milestones in
• Indian cinema with her roles in “Halaku” (1956), “Yahudi” (1958), “Char Dil Char Rahen” (1959),
• “Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi” (1960), “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam”, “Main Chup Rahungi”, “Aarti” (all 1962),
• “Benazir” (1964), “Bahu Begum” (1967), “Mere Apne” (1971) and eventually her swan-song,
• the long-delayed “Pakeezah”, completed just before her death in 1972.
•  Her onscreen career saw her typecast as a quietly-suffering woman in thrall to a dominant male figure.
• But even then she left an undeniable legacy, not only in winning the first two Filmfare Awards for Best Actress (1954 and 1955),
• but also had the unparalleled and so far unbeaten record of securing all the nominations in the category at the 10th edition in 1963.

At 38, lived the life of a 90

•  She died at a shockingly young and tantalisingly seductive age of 38.She took to the bottle and let there be no doubt in your mind that alcoholism caused her untimely death.
• Even at 38, it appeared that she lived a life of 90.
• She passed away, merely weeks after Pakeezah (1972) – arguably her most-loved film – released.
• She didn’t even live to see this torturous film’s grand success. Even today, the name
• Meena Kumari evokes so many things – melodrama, tragedy, pain, loneliness,
• alcoholic movie star and paradoxically, even the image of a quintessential Indian woman.
• And then there’s that much-abused adjective “the Meena Kumari complex”, used to define anyone with a sad sob story.