Sandeep ji, I wrote to you about the Meena Kumari poetry recitations. Did I miss anything, if so please reupload......or anyone who already has them (if any) please help me out....
-Again a crazy hard core fan of Meena Kumari
Bappa

(Did you guys know Meena kumari was the third generation of Tagore family.....!!
Prabhavati Devi her grandmother from mother's side was of the Tagore family (Thakur poribaar/Parivaar)

I do have some of hers but I am not sure if those are the ones you are looking for. I'll upload in a while.

So are you saying MK's mom was Hindu?

According to internet sources, she was born Mahjabeen Ali Bux, daughter of the Parsee theatre actor and music teacher Ali Bux and the dancer Iqbal Begum.

Take a bag-full of salt and check this out!

http://www.bigbollywood.com/mkpg1.htm

There was an article about the details in a famous Bengali Film Magazine "Anandalok" titled "Meena Kumari Ki Bangali?"

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Meena ji's mother was Bengali and she is half Bengali-halh Pathan

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Meena Kumari's original name was Mehjabeen. She changed her name when she became an actress. Very few people know that Meena Kumari was connected to the grand Rabindranath Tagore family. Meena Kumari's grandmother, Hem Sundari Thakur (Tagore) was married into the Tagore family but after she lost her husband Rev Bill, she was compelled to give up all her rights to the family name or property by her in-laws.

The politically powerful and rich family of the Noble Laurate Rabindranath Tagore, were too powerful for her. Due to this sudden severance of connection, not many were aware of Hem Sundari's relationship with the Tagores.

Hem's daughter Prabhawati was Meena Kumari's mother. Prabhawati too was a stage actress and a dancer. Her stage name was Kaamni. Prabhawati later got married to a Pathan called Ali Bux and took the name Iqbal Begum. He was a Sunni Muslim. He played the harmonium and wrote Urdu poetry. He was already married when he met Prabhawati. He composed music for small films like Shahi Lutere and also did some bit roles in films like Idd Ka Chand.

Mehjabeen was born on August 1, 1932 in Dr Gadre's hospital in Mumbai. Her father Bux almost left her in a Muslim orphanage but went to pick her up again after a few hours. Bux was upset that his wife had given birth to another daughter.

"I don't want to work in films. I want to go to school," was the first protest of Mehjabeen. What followed was an intriguing love-hate relationship that she always had with films.

Though her father was against her doing films as he knew what went on inside those four walls of a producer's office, her mother pushed her into the industry as a means of livelihood. Her first role was as a child-artiste in Farzand-e-Watan (renamed Leather Face) by Vijay Bhatt of Prakash Studios. Her first ever scene didn't have lines. There was a scene in which a cat was supposed to lick her cheeks. She was terrified but the cat's tongue was less terrifying than the whip lashing words of her mother.

Ali Bux, Meena's father, who was initially against his daughters joining films, became Meena's full time manager after she became a successful star.

Once while returning from Mahableshwar in their Plymouth, Meena and her family met with a serious accident. And though three of them suffered injuries, Meena's were the worst. Her left hand was seriously injured, and doctors weren't sure if she would be able to use it again. No one knows how much damage was caused to her hand and how it looked after the surgery. Being very image conscious, Meena always hid her hand in her sari pallu, and viewers often tried spotting it. This only added to her charm.

Released on Oct 5, 1952, Baiju Bawra became a hit. And she a star. The reviews were very good. The film ran for 100 weeks in Bombay. It did Silver, Golden and Diamond jubilees. From a heroine who had signed Anarkali for Rs. 15,000, her price immediately jumped to one lakh.

After her accident since she was indisposed, Meena Kumari lost some good films to other actresses. Even one of her favourite films, Noor Jehan, slipped out of her hands. The film was instead made with a little known Asha Mathur, Kamal Kapoor and Pradeep Kumar but the film couldn't be completed. 12 years later Meena got to play Noor Jehan.

During the shooting of Baiju Bawra, for the shooting of the song Tu Ganga ki Mauj, Meena Kumari was alone in a boat and from the shore and the camera. She wasn't looking at the direction she was going in, suddenly unit hands started shouting, but she couldn't hear them. She was excitedly rowing the boat, unaware of the fact that she was at the edge of a waterfall. A couple of unit hands who could swim, jumped into the water and started swimming towards her, luckily her boat was stopped by some boulders from going over. By then one of the unit hands had been able to reach her boat, and climb aboard. Only then she realized just how close to death she had come.

Meena Kumari, once walked out of Mehboob Khan's film Amar, because she couldn't spare the dates for shooting. For a heroine to actually walk out on Dilip Kumar was akin to sacrilege in those days. But Meena Kumari was like that, she made her own rules and lived by them.

She was also a poet. A couplet taken from one of her poems describes her perfectly: Dilsa jab saathi paaya bechaini bhi saath mili. (If I found a companion of my liking I found restlessness with it too). She kept longing for a perfect mate all her life. In her search for that soul mate she also made some very significant friends like Gulzar, Pradeep Kumar, Dharmendra.

After receiving the Filmfare award for Kaajal from President Radhakrishnan, she had dined with him and conversed at length with him in her faltering English. Meena was very excited upon receiving a letter from the Pesident within a week of their meeting. She immediately wrote back to him, and didn't let anyone correct her language in the letter, as she had wanted him to know that she had written the letter on her own.

The actress was also awed when she was looking out for a bungalow and found that the one suited her requirements was inhabited by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930. She was so excited by this that she made it a point to find out from the old gardner, where Bapuji used to sit, where he kept his charkha, where he used to meet his visitors and hold evening prayers etc.

Meena Kumari did the bathing scene in Footpath much against the wishes of her husband Kamal Amrohi. Drinking and ill health took its toll on her career soon. At one point in time she was away from films for five years. Meena Kumari came back to work after that gap with Pakeezah.

She was unwell even while the film was being shot. Meena Kumari rushed out of the sets and started crying when she couldn't dance on Thare rahiyo o banke yaar ve. "I can't do it... it is too late." Kamal Amrohi got Padma Khanna to do the song in place of Meena Kumari but of course in a ghunghat. Meena Kumari had a chat with Padma before the picturisation. The perfectionist that she was, she wanted Padma to walk like her in the music pieces. Padma had to practise for hours before she got the nod from Meena Kumari.

Pakeezah released on February 4, 1972. The film was declared a flop. Three weeks after the release of the film, Meena Kumari fell seriously ill and on March 31, 1972, at 3.25 pm, she died. Pakeezah became a hit.

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That's the story!!!

Bappa

I already down loaded the ones posted at:

http://www.hamaraforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11768

REVEREND BILL (Meena Kumari's maternal grandfather)

The Rev. William Adam was this congregation’s first minister. Donna and I are your 21st. But my connection to Adam began long before we arrived in Toronto and threads through my life in unforeseeable ways. He is also a part of an ongoing connection the First Unitarian Congregation has to India that reaches back to the 19th century.
William Adam would come to be known as the "second fallen Adam," but his intention in the beginning was simply to translate the New Testament into Bengali. Adam was a Brit and had been sent to India by a Baptist missionary society. Early in1821 he began working on this project with Rammohun Roy a social and religious reformer whose writings called for an end to suttee, the practice of burning widows on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands. While working together they became friends and also came to the conclusion that there was no proof of the Trinity in the New Testament. So it was that William Adam became a Unitarian and in that same year they founded the Unitarian Society of Calcutta together. The society, which maintained its Christian character rather than incorporating Indian customs, languished. This caused Roy to rethink his approach and in 1828 he founded "Brahmo Samaj or The Society of Worshippers of One God. Its aim was to "reform Hinduism, purging it of its idolatry," caste, and superstition. It was an attempt to form an ethical faith that looked to one God and the higher values of truth, justice and love. The values were similar to those the Unitarians of that era were applying to Christianity.

Roy left India in 1830 to tour England and America and died in 1833 in Bristol having never made it to the U.S. to visit Channing which had been his desire. The leadership of Brahmo Samaj was taken up by Debendranath Tagore. However it is Debendranath’s son, Rabindranath, the poet and Nobel Laureate, who is better known to us. Go through our hymnal and you’ll find three hymns and four readings that use his words.

In 1838 William Adam left India, came to America, taught for a while at Harvard and told the Unitarians that they should send an agent to India. That agent, like Adam, would become part of the history of this congregation. Flash forward a few years. In 1845 William Adam became the first minister of this congregation. After a one year stay he moved on to teach at the University of Michigan. From there he was called to Chicago to become the second minister of my home congregation, the First Unitarian Society of Chicago and served there until 1849. (That is where my connection to this story begins.)

The very next year, 1850, Charles Dall was called to be the minister of Toronto First. He remained until 1854 and left because of ill health. But in 1855 he became the Unitarian agent to India that Adam had called for 17 years earlier. Dall would spend the next thirty years until his death in 1886 working in India.

Toronto First has yet another connection to India—Jabez Sunderland, the minister of this congregation after whom this very room Sunderland Hall is named. In 1895, Sunderland made his first trip to India and not only did he revive the connection between the British and American Unitarians and the Brahmo Samaj which had ended with Dall’s death; he also met Rabindranath Tagore. Within a few years of Sunderland’s return to America he became the minister of this congregation and before, during and after he left this pulpit he opposed British colonialism and was an ardent ally for the Indian cause in North America.

I have another connection to India in addition to Adam, Dall and Sunderland. But to pick up that thread we need to go to Germany and the year 1910. That was the year in which Paul and Edith Geheeb founded the progressive Odenwaldschule. It was not a religious school but it was infused with religious values. In 1928 Paul Geheeb wrote "Wir legen den höchsten wert…" We place the highest value upon being a fundamentally religious community but not in a creedal sense…" He goes on to list the various religions represented in the school and ends by mentioning Indian culture "…as represented in Gandhi and Tagore with whom we have a strong connection." In 1930 Tagore, who had founded a similar progressive school, came and spent three days visiting the Odenwaldschule. The correspondence continued even after the Geheebs fled Germany. While they were struggling to reestablish the school—now named Ecole d’Humanité—in Switzerland, Tagore wrote to them, "The only hope of saving civilization is through ‘enlightened’ education, and organizations like your school and my Shanti Niketan (peace garden) have indeed a great role to play."

In 1963 I enrolled at the Ecole without knowing of the connections between liberal religion in North America and India nor how they were connected to progressive education in Germany and Switzerland. What I did, unconsciously, know was that the values of tolerance and freedom, diversity and inquiry, appreciation of nature and respect for the individual lived out at the school mirrored those I experienced at church in Chicago, and it left me feeling completely at home even though I was in a foreign land.

The Ecole had this long standing connection with India. Indeed, Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi had briefly attended. When I arrived the only other person of color at the school was a Bengali named Auro. A plump, medium–brown–skinned dwarfish man, his thinning hair came down to his shoulders, while tufts of it stuck out of his nose. Whenever I heard the high-pitched cry, "Edith, O Edith," I knew he was abroad. Sure enough Auro would come shuffling along in his bedroom slippers after Edith Geheeb, the school’s co-founder, trying to catch her attention. He’d have a shawl wrapped over his head so that it covered his ears and tied under his chin—like a man with a toothache—when it was cold. When it was warmer he wore it backwards around his neck. Apparently Bengali men often wear scarves; it was a cultural thing, but I thought it further proof of his weirdness. None of us knew exactly how he came to the Ecole or why Edith tolerated his presence, but every mimic in the school could imitate Auro. Others snickered as he passed. I just moaned to myself, lamenting that the only other brown-skinned person in the school was a fool. The only connection I saw was our skin, but I was very mistaken.

Auro was still there shuffling after Edith when I returned as a teacher in 1971, and he was still there when three years later I entered theological school. One day, two blocks away from my seminary, I was hunting for used books at O’Gara’s when I came upon a book with gold background and black letters that caught my attention. Later Poems of Rabindranath Tagore it read. I thought, worship material. I knew of Tagore so I picked it up. The foreword was by violinist, Yehudi Menuhin, and Aurobindo Bose had translated the poems from Bengali. The name brought to mind the old befuddled Auro who lived at the Ecole. I remembered him wearing his scarf all year round, running around squealing "Edith, O Edith", and being, in general, good for nothing. What an old fart, I chuckled. I skipped the introduction and the translator's note and began paging through the poems. Half way through I came upon a group of poems entitled "Poems of Wonder." On the next page, instead of a poem there was a dedication: "To Edith whose love has sustained me through life. Auro." No, it can’t be, I thought. I flipped back through the pages looking for the translator's note. There, at the end of the note was written "A.B., Ecole d'Humanité, Goldern, Switzerland, August, 1973."

Auro, a nuclear physicist had been among the first five students to attend Tagore’s school. And Auro had been translating these poems—his fourth book—while we were both at the Ecole. My face burnt and I felt like hiding. I pushed four dollars across the counter, didn’t wait for them to put the book in a paper bag and, clutching the poems, I fled. Fleeing out-of-doors did nothing to lessen the intensity of my feeling—my cheeks glowed like embers and the feeling of shame remains intense to this day.

All I saw as I fled, in horror, was how I had misjudged him. It took much longer for me to see the connections between us. And it was only yesterday that I discovered yet another connection. I have two books of Tagore’s poems translated by Aurobindo. The one is dedicated to Edith, the other reads "to the memory of Ānanda Mohan Bose, Patriot and servant of India, who in his last New Year’s greeting wrote to me when I was a pupil at Tagore’s school: ‘God keep you now and always, when father is away.’" When Jabez Sunderland toured India in 1895 among the people he met with was A. M. Bose, the President of the Sadharan Samaj, one of three Brahmo Samaj factions. It seems likely that given the close relationship between the Tagore family and the Brahmo Samaj, and between the Aurobindo family and Tagore that Sunderland met Aurobindo’s father. One of the things our connection means is that we were both reared in liberal religious homes and received progressive, humanistic educations, and are heirs of those liberal values.

But Auro has grown to mean even more to me. This is painful to do but I confess that once I did not see and did not own that I was connected to this man. Instead, I ridiculed him. Ridiculed a sort of man-child who not only translated Tagore but understood spiritual matters I’m still struggling to understand, someone who might have been a mentor if I had not been blind. The shame has taught me to withhold judgment, and so I try and fail and try again and still grow flush at the memory.

How intricate this weave that binds us together—my life into Auro’s, and his into Tagore’s and Geheebs, and Geheeb into my own; and Tagore’s into Rammohun Roy, and Roy’s into William Adam, and Adam into Dall and Sunderland and again into my own and ours. Little by little I’ve come to see how deeply our lives are interconnected. But I don’t think it is unusual. Rather, I think we are blinded by bias and self-absorption. Our connections are complex, like following this sermon, but also commonplace, shockingly ordinary but invisible. At this moment this congregation’s own Ellen Campbell, as President of the International Association for Religious Freedom, works with the Brahmo Samaj. At this moment this congregation’s own Ted Draper is in Hyderabad at a Child Haven Home, started by Bonnie and Fred Cappucino, whom you will see in April when Fred does the service here. At this moment this congregation’s own Frank Kolhatkar, who started a Child Haven Home in his own family’s village in India, which now has 27 destitute children, which many of us support. These homes are run on Gandhian principles. Gandhi who was, doubtlessly, influenced by Rammohun Roy, was a friend of Tagore’s and wrote in support of Jabez Sunderland’s tireless work for Indian independence.

Our lives are interwoven with the past, present and future; emerging from that which came before, we are its continuation; our lives embody values that in living out we pass on; we are trans-temporal linkages between the past and the future, between generations and cultures. Much came before us and will come after us and we are the conduit for important values—values that are, as Tagore wrote,

"the only hope of saving civilization."
Those who in the name of Faith embrace illusion,
Kill and are killed.
Even the atheist gets God’s blessings-
Does not boast [but rather]
With reverence …lights the lamp of Reason
And pays…homage not to scriptures,
But to the good in humankind…
O Lord, breaking false religion,
Save the blind!
Break! O break
The altar that is drowned in blood.
Let your thunder strike
Into the prison of false religion,
And bring to this unhappy land
The light of Knowledge.


Rabindranath Tagore
Translated by Aurobindo Bose

Bappa-da:

I've taken the liberty of creating a new topic and moving here posts in the Mohd. Rafi forum that did not relate to that thread.

Thanks. I am sorry, but that was the only way to catch a hold of sandeep ji as he had not visited the Meena Kumari forum for days!!!!

Please do whatever is necessary.....You all are doing a GREAT job....

BTW, I was curious as to how this HF came into existence? Whose brainchild is it?

Bappa

I found that site in 2002!!. I can believe this though!!!
Very Sad!!!

Bappa

Continuing on the topic that was started by late B.Chatterjee on Meena Kumari (May peace be with both of them), I've typed in the text of two of the scans provided by Flex bhai in his topic ( http://www.hamaraforums.com/index.php?showtopic=12601 ) . I'll continue on this as and when I get time. There might be mistakes in few counts while typing, please do mention it so that I can correct it.



One is tempted to say that with the passing away of Meena Kumari the era of the great Stars has ended. But perhaps that would be denying the future. One can say that the old-world graciousness and dignity associated in the nostalgia of each one of us with some undefined golden age has died with her.

The graciousness was always there - when with a sensitive, bejewelled hand she poured a cup of tea for you or, taking out her most secret diary under her pillow, read out in that beautifully modulated voice, especially for you, a 'nazm' composed by herself on life, but more on death, and on love mostly unrequited.

She made a lot of money and lost it. She knew great love - and lost that too. Across those exquisite sculptured features, the marble made flesh, flickered the bemused query - is it true that they say that it is better to have loved and lost?

She could give unendingly of herself to her roles because she was infinitely bigger than all the roles she played. Each role she played deminished her as a woman, yet paradoxically added to her stature as an artiste.

The artiste won plaudits. The woman? Left with nothing.

Meena Kumari's life was cast in the heroic mould which, since the Greeks, has been tragic. Consuming passions, an agonizing lonliness, the one fatal flaw. But nothing petty or mean. Never anything mean.

Many of today's star aspirants, were they to reach up to her, would be signed by her resplendent flame. This, pale mourners, is the extent of our tragedy, the true nature of our loss.

- B.K



"No I had better not talk to you straightaway. You have just risen from the world of the living and the voice of one of its inhabitants might disturb you; you have had enough of it, haven't you? I would rather disturb my own kind, the living!"

Death and Meena had been playing hide and seek with one another for quite some time. Whenever the players tired of their play they took a breather Death to prepare a new to stalk his quarry. Meena to recoup her lost health and put between herself and the Supreme Hunter, as much distance as she could. Whatever the distance achieved, it shrank suddenly one bright afternoon recently; the cold fingers of her pursuer pressed against her throat. There was a certain irrevocability about the pressure of those fingers.

"Hello out there, are you listening? Don't."

Meena Kumari died on a Good friday - the day made holy by the crucifixation of a Redeemer of mankind. The analogy lacks sense even if one thinks of the notorious thieves who were sent to the cross at the same moment. To be redeemed of her suffering which was now a flaming conflagration, now a treacherous spark hiding underneath a heap of ash (that spark held the promise and threat of becoming a flame anytime), Meena had to cross a Calvary of tears. It took her a long time for her journey began at the age of 5 or 6 or 7 when she and the world were so innocent.

"Listen to the poem I am composing for Meenaji." No more spoken word. Presently the bow begins to slide across the strings of a violin. The look in his eyes deepens, an undefinable shadow sits on his brow and I wonder if he is where I see him. But then the poem begins to flow out of the depths of the taut strings of a violin and the phrases of the poem bespeak the "poet's longing for the soul's lost home."

Jagjit, my singer-music director friend, has just begun singing a ghazal in a jampacked hall where artists from different fields foregather to give utternace to their souls. I slip into the hand of someone a chit and request that he pass it on to Jagjit. Without a question he goes up to the dais and presently the singing stops, the prose takes over; "Sahegjan of 'Pakeezah' and Sita of 'Dil Ke Mandir' has gone to far off place in search of a rainbow", Jagjit reads. Then a hush, and then a voice crescendoing heavenward. The same ghazal but the meaning has changed.



"Hello out there! Liked my friends singing?"

The notes of the Arohi tanleapt across spatial vastness as if in pursuit of someone, something that was too precious to be lost. Sound waves from God knows where permeate my senses: "Good that my death comes in handy for you to publicize your musician friend. Ha, ha."

"Hello out there, shut up, will you?"

Yes, Jagjit is singing. I see in my mind's eye, three persons: J, Meena and myself. I have just introduced to J and M. She snatched out of J's bashfulness (or was he playing hard to get?) a promise that he would sing to her someday.

What matters now is a promise is being fulfilled, a beloved one being pursued frenziedly by a song's crescendo, and, God help this man, a strange smile on his face. I understand that smile too. It belongs to the face of seeker who the while he sings to one of his own tribe of seekers, Meena Kumari. Not for him the thought that he sang where death prevailed, without its horror.

"Hello out there, I understand a new kind of death! Because you died and J sang the way he sang. Thanks to you for dying. Cruel? What else do you expect from the living?"

It's a moment filled with phantasmagoria, a welter of feelings, thoughts, screaming reflexes, smiling memories, pain you feel now, and do not feel a moment later. Heaviness and conttonwool lightness, as you feel up there where the pull of gravity attracts you no more.

You are a human being, plain and uncomplicated; none expects from you thoughts that are high-falutin, complex and as such profound (?). You are a writer and they damn you with reminders of your past training, your articulate thinking. Being in the presence of death of a dear respected friend, I couldn't care less if I fail to measure up to their Everest high standards of literary finesse. They that set that standard can go to blazes.

Who killed Meena Kumari! Their number, is legion, beginning with Death and cirrhosis of the liver running neck and neck, then come human beings, deadlier than both for the sheerfacility with which they can do you in without you knowing whether you were hit by a comet or just nothing. It is not the symbolical killer, Tiger, who turned killing into an art. It's you and I. (Swallow it you sons of bitches. Let's be men!) Even the person who is no more was man enough to ... I shall come to it all in a moment.

"Hello out there" (I just killed the man who conversed with the dead. So...)

Remember the day you first met her! Time without number you called her 'didd' (elder sister). Then the fateful day when in response to your persistent invitations, the gullible fool that she was, she came visiting with you and my presence near you must have been a curse you couldn't help enduring. I kept reading and you kept talking till the cows went home and Meena became enraptured - a tragic prisioner of semantics despite herself for she knew words and how to use them.

Only commanship was new to her! I remember her words - call it misquotation and go to hell - "You know, I took poison tonight." Yes, poison for her, but a kind of innocent persuader for you.

The persuader did well, persuading a fell disease to come back and find lodgement in her body and corrode it irrevocably. They say you were all tears when they lowered her in the grave. I wasn't there to see those tears. I was somewhere else drinking in an orgy of self-fulfilment, celebrating the event of a Meena dying! Shame on me! Look after yourself, Mack (this means 'a crack salesman' in the highroad expression of the New York hoods).

"Hello, out there. Look around and send me word pronto, if there is a film industry where you are at this point in time. If yes, depend on me and two or three others to deepen our friendship with Mack. Who else could tell us the name and brand of the poison he shoved down our throats with words, words, words. With us he wouldn't have to through all that bother."

What happened? Now the mist is clearing. Messalina the tragic queen of Rome happened to Meena Kumari. So be it Sahebjan of "Pakeezah" has found her eternal spouse, that only death is. Loney or alone she could be from here on out. Neither come to you when you are nothingness become on never to be parted till life does part them.

"Hello out there, count your blessings and here is a friendly handclasp across the Endlessness which separates you from so many. You couldn't ask for more. Good heavens, am I nuts You and asking? Its unthinkable. In life you threw away precious stones - rubies, pearls, diamonds. The swine at your door collected them like a scanvanger collects dirt. For yourself you collected pebbles, nice, shapely and so very clean. Here is assuring you they are all there as you left them, all laid out in different patterns in different parts of your living room. We who have life have no use for pebbles ever if you spent a lifetime collecting them.

"Hello out there. Thanks for this new awareness that came to me and also for death that came to you!

"Farewell and better luck on the younder side."