[farhana]

meena kumari ka asli naam hai Mahjabeen Ali Bux.
It was in tragedies that Meena Kumari triumphed. She could cry without using glycerine, a great achievement in acting. Regarded as the greatest tragedy queen of Indian cinema, she portrayed a unique blend of great sensitivity, pain, sacrifice and purity in her reel life. And there is a reason for this. It was because these tragedies pervaded her real life too

No one could give her the happiness she longed for. It was not in her destiny. Life had contrived to plunge her deep into melancholia from which no one could pull her out. Restlessness had also gripped her.She married Kamal Amrohi, a film director and writer who was 15 years her senior, already married and with children, much against her parents wishes.

Though out of Kamal Amrohi’s clutches, Meena Kumari fell into a pool of loneliness and self-pity. She tried to find lasting friendship in Gulzar, Dharmendra and Sawan Kumar. Suffering from insomnia and depression, she turned to liquor as her last refuge, hankering and searching for that elusive happiness which never came her way.

A dreamer, Meena Kumari found solace in poetry. The last line she wrote was, "Kya meri maiyyat ka waqt aagaya?" How true these were words! She died of cirrhosis of liver caused by excessive drinking, leaving nothing behind except her poems, ghazals, nazms and diaries to be given to Gulzar. Her book of verses is aptly entitled Tanha Chand.




aaGaaz to hotaa hai anjaam nahii.n hotaa
jab merii kahaanii me.n vo naam nahii.n hotaa

[aaGaaz = start; anjaam = end/result]

jab zulf kii kaalikh me.n ghul jaaye ko_ii rahii
bad_naam sahii lekin gum_naam nahii.n hotaa

[kaalikh = blackness]

ha.Ns ha.Ns ke javaa.N dil ke ham kyo.n na chune.n Tuka.De
har shaKhs kii qismat me.n inaam nahiin hotaa

bahate hue aa.Nsuu ne aa.Nkho.n se kahaa tham kar
jo mai se pighal jaaye vo jaam nahii.n hotaa

din Duube hai.n yaa Duubii baaraat liye kashtii
saahil pe magar ko_ii koharaam nahiin hotaa