Maanik Mahna has vivid memories of Meena Kumari’s death. The businessman was only six years old when the actor died from liver failure on March 31, 1972, but he remembers the shocked reactions of his family in Delhi.
“The news had spread like wildfire – they discussed whether she did 77 films or 100 films,” Mahna recalled. A bus was organised to transport grieving fans from the neighbourhood to a theatre to watch her final film Pakeezah, which had been released a few weeks before her death, Mahna said.
Mahna’s obsession with Meena Kumari became even more magnificent over the subsequent decades. A few years ago, he teamed up with filmmaker Geetika Narang Abbasi for a documentary on Meena Kumari. The result is a biographical non-fiction film tentatively titled Mahjabeen, which is Meena Kumari’s birth name.
Mahjabeen follows from Narang Abbasi’s interest in films that go behind the scenes of showbiz. Narang Abbasi’s credits include Urf (2022), the acclaimed documentary about the world of Hindi movie star lookalikes.
“Cinema on cinema is my favourite genre,” Narang Abbasi said. Through Mahjabeen, Narang Abbasi hopes to “draw the line between how skilled an actor she [Meena Kumari] was and what impact her personality had on people”.
She added, “The idea is to also look beyond the star. There is this screen persona that impacted people and there is also her personal life that also had a great impact on people.”
Apart from exploring Mahna’s passion for Meena Kumari, the film includes interviews with Meena Kumari’s niece Shahina Rana and Rana’s daughter, Tina Singh-Jain.
“We have only interviewed people who knew her, who worked with her, who had some connection with her, rather than experts,” Narang Abbasi said. “We have her co-actors like Honey Irani and Daisy Irani who have spoken very fondly of her. We have her family, of course. We also have Farida Jalal and Sachin Pilgaonkar.”
The documentary took proper shape after Mahna met Shahina Rana, who lives in Amritsar. “Maanik had been looking for somebody to direct the film for a year,” Narang Abbasi said. “He had read the book Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai: Urdu Memoirs of Cinema Legends, written by my husband Yasir Abbasi. The first essay in that is by Nargis on Meena Kumari. Maanik got in touch with my husband first and then connected with me.”
Mahjabeen was among the work-in-progress projects at the recently concluded film market event Cinevesture in Chandigarh. Held between March 20 and 23, Cinevesture included workshops aimed at linking investors with filmmakers as well as providing mentorship to under-production films such as Mahjabeen.
At Chandigarh, Narang Abbasi and Mahna – who are producing Mahjabeen together – were accompanied by the documentary’s editor, Neha Mehra. Mahjabeen was among six projects presented at the InTheWorks Lab curated by Rucha Pathak and mentored by Sidharth Meer, Shonali Bose, Nitin Baid and Kilian Kerwin.
“We were at Cinevesture to figure out what’s clicking and not clicking, to bridge the gap between what we are trying to say and what the film is saying right now,” Narang Abbasi said. “Such labs help in bridging that gap. We presented the very raw, rough cut of the film. We are still in the editing phase. Filmmaking is a long process, and we have a lot of footage. It’s a journey that is still evolving.”
When completed, Mahjabeen could potentially broaden the popular understanding of Meena Kumari. One of the most celebrated stars of the 1950s and 1960s, Meena Kumari was stuck with the “Tragedy Queen” label for her ability to evoke deeply felt pain, suffering and forbearance.
Her hardscrabble childhood (she was born in 1933 into a working-class family in Mumbai), widely publicised personal relationships, turbulent marriage to Pakeezah director Kamal Amrohi, alcoholism and untimely death at the age of 38 have overshadowed her rich career as well as her achievements as an Urdu poet of repute.
Mahna remembers his mother gifting him a record of I Write I Recite, the album of poems narrated by Meena Kumari. “I learnt Urdu to understand her poems,” Mahna said. “Making a film on her was always on my mind.”
Meena Kumari surpassed her peers, Mahna added. “As a woman, as an artist, as everything, she’s always inviting curiosity and interpretations,” he observed. “She is a tragedy queen. She’s a truly multifaceted being. She’s a poet, she broke into a male domain of poetry. She was determined to write and express herself. She was determined to live her life on her own terms, and didn’t hide anything.”
Narang Abbasi initially didn’t have a personal connection with Meena Kumari – but that changed after she began delving into her subject.
“I was a bit reluctant in the beginning because Meena Kumari is such a big icon,” Narang Abbasi said. “After a few meetings with Maanik, I felt that the story lies in Maanik himself, because his story really fascinated me. I thought that the film could essentially be a Meena Kumari fan’s journey.”
Narang Abbasi also looked at how Meena Kumari was perceived in her own family. “My mother perhaps idolised her as a woman and my father considered her a very fine artist,” she said. “That got me thinking – how could two very different people like the same person for entirely different reasons? How do you connect to somebody, how do you connect to the image?”
The collaboration between Mahna and Narang Abbasi has been challenging, they acknowledged.
“It’s been a very hard process, but in 2024, the relationship was transformed,” Mahna said. “I also teach human consciousness, through a programme called Avatar. Geetika became my student. After that, our relationship went to a different level. There was a mutual understanding, love and affinity.”
Mahna began to better appreciate Narang Abbasi’s approach to the film. “I’m a controlling person, I like to be the boss,” he said. “I am now constantly broadening my perspective – if somebody else has a different treatment or interpretation of Meena Kumari, I need to allow that.”
For Narang Abbasi, the effort is to make a film that is neither a regular biopic nor a hagiography.
“There is a very thin line in doing that because there is a super-fan in the film,” she said. “These are some of the conflicts that we are processing. For me, Meena Kumari was way more than being a tragedy queen. I also see her as a rebel. I see Maanik as a rebel. I think that has a lot to do with his passion for Meena Kumari as well. She probably instilled that in him.”
Also read:
That time when Meena Kumari competed with Meena Kumari and Meena Kumari for a Filmfare award
Also famous: ‘Urf’ examines the lives and dreams of Hindi movie star lookalikes
Kamal Amrohi made only four films. Fortunately for us, one of them was ‘Pakeezah’
