India's theatre community will miss Maqbool Fida Husain's childlike enthusiasm for theatre, and creating iconic posters
India's theatre community will miss Maqbool Fida Husain's childlike enthusiasm for theatre, and creating iconic posters
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While painter MF Husain's love for popular cinema and music is well known, what's not is that he was a fan of Indian theatre.
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This was the last poster that M F Husain painted for Ekjute's Bollywood Ko Salaam in 2010
Here was a man who could demand VIP treatment (and receive it too) but he would always humbly ask if he could be seated in the front row, recall theatrewalas. If he liked the play, he'd come back, friends and family in tow.
As an artist, Husain's biggest contribution to a theatre were the posters he created.
Veteran actor Mohan Agashe, who played Nana Phadnavis in Jabbar Patel's cult production Ghashiram Kotwal, remembers how on the 500th show of Vijay Tendulkar's play, Husain asked the producers if he could sit in row one and sketch while the play was on. "Of course, we said yes. How could we refuse him?" says Agashe, still struck by Husain's humility.
"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," says the actor who Husain later cast in his film, Gaja Gamini.
Husain's tryst with the play (mired in controversy for hurting 'the feelings of the Chitpavan Brahmin community') did not end there.
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In 1989, when the group was invited to tour Europe, they requested Husain to paint posters, and he readily agreed.
Months passed but there was no word from Husain, and the group gave up the idea. "On the day that we were to leave for Russia and Hungary, 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,'" Agashe recalls.
The packet held 50 copies of the posters, and six picture postcards. "He remembered that we were leaving that night and made sure the posters reached us in time."
Husain's association with actress-director Nadira Babbar's theatre group Ekjute also lasted for years. He was a family friend, and would often drop by at her parent's home.
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"Once when he arrived, we weren't at home. So, he sketched a painting on the door and left. Bilkul manchale the! He found joy in the simplest of things.
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," relates Babbar.
Babbar and Husain stayed connected even when she took up theatre. He'd seen Ekjute's Begum Jaan, the story of a legendary classical singer of yesteryears more than seven times.
"He loved watching plays from the front row. Like a child, he'd watch the actors, and the audience for their reaction," says Babbar.
Husain designed several posters for her theatre group; the last that he painted in December 2010 was for Bollywood Ko Salaam.
"I had called him up to tell him I was planning to pay a tribute to Hindi cinema of the 50s. Without any hesitation, he offered to make the poster."
As an artist, Husain's biggest contribution to a theatre were the posters he created
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