MF Husain - Maria Zourkova: An Unfinished Love Story

The celebrated artist turns 101 today. What had made him throw caution to the winds for this young Czech woman?

Today if he was alive and in his homeland, India’s pre-eminent artist, would have brought in his 101st birthday, I suspect, with his customary lust for life.

Lunch by noon at a Chinese restaurant with his extended family, followed by a fun do with an array of friends in the evening. An Egyptian belly dancer was one such birthday celebration’s show-stopper, an item which the birthday boy jigged to robustly.

Maqbool Fida Husain of thousands of canvases, sketches, drawings, wooden toys, and much more, was a bon vivant. He had as many spicy stories to narrate, his eyes a-sparkle about the tales of high drama and rhapsodic romances. 

Love and drama chased him from the time he was a painter of film hoardings, who would sleep on the mean streets to the time he was acknowledged as the nation’s top-profile artist, only to be felled by controversies towards his autumn years. Those years he spent hopping between Muscat, Dubai, New York, and London where his body was eventually laid to rest.

“I long to return to Bombay,” he would tell me over the ‘phone or at meetings in London. “I long to return for a cup of chai and bun maska to Kyani’s restaurant on Dhobi Talao. If I ever do come back, by some miracle, I will head from the airport to Kyani’s straightaway.”  

Sentimental he was to the core, but if he shed tears in exile, he never showed them.

In the course of interviewing Husain over five years for an authorised biography – which remains unwritten – he would speak about his muses and liaisons frankly. The caveat was, “Zara dhyaan rakhna that no one gets hurt.” I never reached that point.

Of all the stories, he recalled, the one that struck me as worthy of a novel or a feature film by itself, relates to a young Czech woman whom he had almost married. Husain had thrown caution to the winds, he had forgotten that he was married and a father of a brood of children.

On his 101st salgirah here are some glimpses, then, of the M F Husain-Maria Zourkova Love Story: 1956.

That year, Husain had been invited to Czechoslovakia to exhibit a collection of 34 artworks. When the show ended one evening, he noticed a young woman’s gaze still transfixed on the paintings. Impulsively, he strode up to her and gifted her the entire collection. Perplexed, she blushed, stared at his flowing beard, and darted a non-sequitur of a line, “You will always look like an Indian artist.”

The next day, Husain dolled himself up in a pret-a-porter suit complete with a neck-tie. He shaved his beard, moustache and clipped his hair. The gallery’s staff didn’t recognise him. Maria who had returned to the venue, embraced him and laughed out loud, “Maq, you’re such a clown. You can win anyone’s heart by doing such silly things. I actually liked your beard.”

Once the exhibition wound up, Husain stayed back in Prague. Maria became his guide, companion and interpreter. Their companionship lasted, intermittently, through six years. The artist would reminisce, “We’d walk through the streets of Prague as if in a dream. I would talk to her about Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s philosophy and she would talk Kafka. But she was already committed to marry a scientist. I had to accept that and asked her to accept the 34 paintings as a dowry.”

“What if I were to ask you to marry me instead?” he dared to propose. Maria was stumped. Taking her silence for consent, Husain flew to London to select a wedding dress for her, and then to Germany to buy a Volkswagen car. The wedding dress and the car were delivered to the doorstep of the nunnery where she lived. Maria was overwhelmed.

The next morning, she emerged from the nunnery’s gate. Husain sensed that she wouldn’t marry him and he was right. Maria pointed out that they came from different worlds, ‘different cultures’. The marriage would not work. They would only end up hurting his family and her fiancé. Maria returned the wedding dress and the car keys. On his unconditional insistence, she accepted the 34 paintings.

A part of this story Husain reconstructed in his film Meenaxi: A Tale of 3 Cities. Tabu, in one of the impersonations of the women in the artist’s life, enacted Maria.  

And Husain wished to show the film to Maria Zourkova, who had since decades migrated with her husband to Australia.

Her address was tracked. As soon as Husain met her, there was an exchange of polite conversation on how they had aged and put on weight. And then Maria ended their reunion with a sting in the tale. She asked him to take back the 34 paintings to India where they belonged. Pointing out that her husband and she had constantly felt guilty about keeping the priceless artworks, she said, “I had hoped to meet you some day…and…” She did not complete the sentence.

Husain was not surprised. “In fact, I knew she would not keep the paintings forever. I would like to think, that’s because they reminded her of a love story which could have had a happy ending. Ours ended, yes, but on a bittersweet note.”

(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter)