Autobiography of meena kumari pakeezah story

Borrowing a tape recorder, Mr Mohammed made rounds to the producers. He played them his Pakeezah songs. The producers were unimpressed. This was no music, they said. This was out of date. Could he produce something more contemporary, more jazzy? Poor Ghulam Mohammed would return with his tape recorder. In he was sick. He had no money to buy food.

He had no money to buy medicines. Soon, Ghulam Mohammed was dead, unmourned and unremembered. He had died in sickness and in poverty and in shame. Next year, when they are distributing the Filmfare Awards and Ghulam Mohammed gets his for Pakeezah , as I confidently expect him to, he will take little comfort in posthumous glory. The exact temperature of the Manju-Chandan relations after the restarting of Pakeezah is, predictably, inexact and open to dispute.

A purely working relationship, or was a reconciliation reached? According to Amrohi, he and Manju had come very close indeed. During the shooting journeys she cared after Chandan as a wife looks after her husband. On his part he says he ensured that Manju was provided all material comforts and conveniences. Meena, Amrohi says, had by now realized the disastrous folly she had committed by leaving his house.

One evening when they were alone she cried bitterly and regretfully. Such close emotional proximity existed between the two in that it was suggested Meena go back with her husband to live in Rembrandt. How could she feel anything for him after the way he treated her during the shooting of Pakeezah. This is borne out by her subsequent attitude to him and by the stipulations in her will.

The populace was wondering if this heralded and muchtalked- about film would live up to its great expectations. There seemed to be some doubt whether my heroine in her advanced age could do justice to a part which was reported to be grilling and grinding. A one-and-a-half-crore rupee film, CinemaScope, Eastmancolor, fifteen years in the making, was at last to be screened.

Looking reflective and refined, my heroine arrived to attend the last premiere of her life. She let Mr Raaj Kumar, for the benefit of the press, kiss her hand and then she went in to see the film. The next morning reaction was discouraging. Later, the resident critic of Filmfare , Mr Banaji, gave it one lonely star this rating means very poor.

Most of the so-called sophisticated critics of India had no time for the hackneyed story of a dancing girl. My heroine, however, silenced the sceptics. At the age of forty, she had come roaring back to form and demonstrated that she was still in a class of her own. The Urdu press, more in sympathy with the concept, was fulsome in its praise.

A great performance? That is not for me to say: that is for the people to decide. For me to say is this: it is a performance to deliver which I have, as an actress, had to delve deeper into the secret wells of being than any actor or actress normally delves in the process of his or her professional work. As she confesses, she lived with Pakeezah , she saw its fortunes rise and fall, and she was followed by this film wherever she went.

Both Amrohi and Meena just had to get Pakeezah out of their respective systems. This was also the biggest film of her career, and additionally she saw its story, as I mentioned earlier, as a reflection of her private aspirations. In a way in real life she was a nautch girl. People came to her for their quota of pleasure and departed.

No one cared for her as a person. A film which crystallized this theme was ordained to attract and stay with her. While she was dancing. I would have preferred more lust. While she was playful, I would have preferred more frivolity. While she was briefly happy, I would have preferred more joy. While she was resigned, I would have preferred more fatalism.

Raging controversy exists as to who is the true owner of Pakeezah. There is a large body which says that without Meena Kumari this film is nothing. Mr Habib Khan, the taxi driver whom I have quoted in the beginning, echoed the thoughts of many people who had seen this film.

Autobiography of meena kumari pakeezah story

Let me make my own position on Pakeezah clear. I thought it was a flawed but noble attempt. No one before Amrohi had captured honestly the dilemma of the dancing girl. Certainly many debased and unworthy commercial formulas were used. Certainly the story was unoriginal, and all that bit about the train stopping inches away from the heroine could have been avoided.

But what makes this long-awaited film worthwhile is its devotion, its period authenticity. Mr Banaji, the very worthy critic of Filmfare , and other worthy critics dabbling in Pasolini and Renoir are disqualified from comment. But compared to the likes of Hare Rama Hare Krishna it is a classic. The Illustrated Weekly of India. McDonagh, Maitland TV Guide.

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Archived from the original on 26 February British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 28 June Prime Video. He goes back in time to Meetawala Chawl in Dadar East, where she was born, and to the flats and mansions she lived in, the studios where she worked, the hospital where she died and the cemetery she was cremated in. Having never met the star, Mehta talks to all those who were close to her - her much-maligned husband Kamal Amrohi, her sisters, her in-laws, her colleagues and co-stars - to create a complex portrait of a woman who carefully cultivated the image of someone 'unfairly exploited and betrayed by her lovers and lady luck'.

The filmmaker initially planned to make an ambitious film titled Anarkali with Kumari in the lead, however the film got shelved due to budget issues and after Kumari met with an accident that left her hospitalised for a while. Kamal Amrohi and Meena Kumari reportedly got married in a very private ceremony on 14 February, Only Amrohi's close friends and Kumari's younger sister were part of their wedding.

Kumari was reportedly 19 when she married Amrohi, while he was The film, which was loosely based on Amrohi and Kumari's own love story, failed to work at the box-office. Though Amrohi faced a setback as a director, Meena Kumari signed on for projects with some of the biggest stars of her time including Dilip Kumar. It was apparently while shooting for Dilip Kumar's Azaad that the idea of making Pakeezah was first discussed by Amrohi and Kumari.

Azaad starring Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari, Pran and others was the highest grossing film of the year and Amrohi could dream about ambitiously paying a cinematic tribute to his wife Meena Kumari by making Pakeezah. The shoot for Pakeezah began in , German cinematographer Josef Wirsching who was based out of India shot Pakeezah, but he passed away in while the film was still incomplete.

Pakeezah was initially conceived as a black and white film, but was eventually released in colour. This was the only colour film shot by Wirsching. Even the music composer of Pakeezah, Ghulam Mohammed, passed away while the film was still under production. Popular music director Naushad took over and completed the background music of the film after Mohammed's death.

Pakeezah's soundtrack went on to become one of the highest-selling albums of the s. According to Tajdar Amrohi, Mohammed had composed 12 songs for the film and Amrohi chose to keep 6 of them. When Pakeezah was restarted in , some of Amrohi's friends suggested that he get a new soundtrack composed for the film since Mohammed's songs would have been outdated, but the filmmaker refused to do so.

Between and Pakeezah made some progress but could not be completed.