Meenaxi: A Tale Of Three Cities Completes 21 Years – A Timeless Ode To Art And Illusion

Madhuri Dixit was not the only muse in legendary painter M.F. Hussain’s life.

After he directed Gaja Gamini as a homage to Dixit’s beauty, he directed Meenaxi: A Tale of 3 Cities, which turned 21 on April 2.Hussain Saab cast the then-incandescent Tabu in three roles—Meenaxi, Tanu, and Maria—each located in a different city: Hyderabad, Jaisalmer, and Prague.Though far less inaccessible for viewers than Gaja Gamini (Naseeruddin Shah tells me to let him know when I understand what that was all about), Meenaxi nonetheless suffered from bouts of incurable esotericism.



Tabu may not be as graceful and nimble-footed as Madhuri Dixit, but she carried the weight of the film’s basic debate on art, life, and illusion with a fertile facility that transported Hussain’s vision into the realm of the poetic.The three segments were not mutually exclusive in the way of, say, Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker. Characters overlap, collide, and coalesce to the point where borders between feeling and manifestation, thought and expression, seem to merge in a dance of life.

To call Tabu’s dedicated, passionate performance merely a performance would belittle what Hussain and she have set out to achieve in these frames. As Tabu traveled from one time zone to another, she transported us to a world where maya (illusion) seduces and caresses reality. True, her Czech accent in the last overture is strained.

But then, this is a film of heightened realism, where the characters are entirely emblematic. Their value lies not in what they speak but in what they hold back—for a time that never comes.In a conversation with this writer, Hussain Saab said, “I am proud of both Gaja Gamini and Meenaxi.

Both Madhuri and Tabu gave remarkable performances. Who was better? Arrey, bhai! I can’t choose between the two. They are both beautiful, extremely talented women.

You can’t ask me to select one among my two eyes. Yeh toh na-insaafi hogi.”I remember running into M.

F. Hussain, accompanied by Tabu, at Gulzar Saab’s house. One could see that there was a very special and sublime bonding between the painter and his muse in the way she clung to his shoulder like a filial muse.

Somewhere in the middle of this seamless tale—or was it the beginning of an end, or perhaps the end of a beginning?—Tabu, playing an elusive creature of fugitive desires in Jaisalmer, steals into Kunal’s haveli on tiptoes with the express intention of making her feelings manifest.But Kunal (played by a refreshingly natural, non-iron-pumping Kunal Kapoor) is shy and apprehensive. “You here at this time of the night?” he asks, looking uneasily over his shoulder.

Meenaxi’s face falls, like a thousand blooming flowers descending from a branch that, not so long ago, waved proudly into the sky.That scene, where the woman, at the risk of her own reputation, steals into the arms of passion, seems like M.F.

Hussain’s tribute to Devdas.As far as Meenaxi is concerned, it’s the end of love. But for the author Nawab (Raghuvir Yadav), it’s also the cue for a new beginning.

He can now take his heroine into another dimension, another continent—another chance for Tabu to showcase her enchanting enigma.Meenaxi: A Tale Of 3 Cities dwells on the critical and ageless debate on the intricate relationship between the creator and his creation, the artist and his art, and the painter and his brush.Between the brush and the brushstroke lies a universe of feelings and emotions, many inexpressible—almost as elusive as Tabu’s eyes, which wander beyond the flaming frames of the screen to gaze at the very essence of love and existence.

Essence is the key to Meenaxi. The first of the three Tabus who colonize M.F.

Hussain’s tale of three cities is a perfume seller in Hyderabad. As Santosh Sivan dodges auto-rickshaws and commuters in cluttered Hyderabad to zero in on Meenaxi, the camera becomes the conscience of Nawab (played by a rather ill-cast Raghuvir Yadav), the author searching for the perfect heroine for his next novel.Perfection, being the grandest illusion of art and life, Nawab finds Meenaxi—the wily, pushy, slightly crude but deliciously seductive ittar seller.

It’s in the way that Hussain looks for imperfection in art that Meenaxi shines beyond his earlier, somewhat scrambled stab at direction in Gaja Gamini. Tabu may not be as graceful and nimble-footed as Madhuri Dixit, but she carries the weight of the film’s basic debate on art, life, and illusion with a fertile facility that transports Hussain’s vision into the realm of the poetic.The film’s three segments are not mutually exclusive, as in, say, Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker.

Characters overlap, collide, and coalesce to the point where borders between feeling and manifestation, thought and expression, seem to merge in a dance of life.Deliberately, M.F.

Hussain makes his characters talk in unusually loud voices.In one sequence, he personally appears at an Irani restaurant (Subhash Ghai, move over!) and winces the minute the first Tabu, the ittar-seller, opens her mouth to nag the writer Nawab. Her raging passion to alchemize her ordinary life into art through Nawab’s pen is also every artist’s craving for immortality through their art.

It’s that craving that comes across in Tabu’s remarkable presence. To call it a performance would be belittling what Hussain and she have set out to achieve in these frames.As Tabu travels from one time zone to another, she transports us to a world where maya (illusion) seduces and caresses reality.

True, her Czech accent in the last overture is strained. But then, this is a film of heightened realism, where the characters are entirely emblematic. Their value lies not in what they speak but in what they hold back—for a time that never comes.

Also Read: Chhorii 2 Trailer OUT: Nushrratt Bharuccha And Soha Ali Khan Bring A Horror Ride Like Never Before – Watch!The soundtrack and visual texture of Meenaxi elevate the film to a work of endless enchantment. The now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t quality in the three-tiered protagonist’s personality makes her a creation of caprice like no other in Hindi cinema.The overt and aggressive manner in which the songs and dances unfold indicate a celebration of life in swirling blues, opulent oranges, and ravishing reds.

Only a painter could infuse such a steep sense of aesthetics into the narrative canvas. The frames are opulent and yet not crowded. Every song and dance, from Rang Hai to Titli Daboch Li Maine (the latter, a fascinating and beguiling study of brothel eroticism in the context of ‘pure’ love), is heart-stopping in its mixture of melody and emotions, yielding a lingering and lush lyricism.

Admittedly, parts of the film are enormously self-indulgent. Though all three cities—Hyderabad, Jaisalmer, and Prague—are living, throbbing characters in Hussain’s fey scheme of life and art, portions of the visuals appear touristic. On the other hand, the sheer energy and passion of the 88-year-old creator’s mise-en-scène make you sit and savor every stroke of expression in the narration.

When the third Tabu, Maria in Prague, shyly tells Kunal that she walks with, and not rides, her bicycle because she needs company, you want time to freeze so you can savor the mystery and poetry of her confession.A sequence such as the one where Nawab’s document goes up in flames exudes a startling aroma of a burnished creation, ripened just to the stage where the fruit doesn’t fall from the tree.Sweet, melodious, tender, and seductive, Meenaxi is at once a celebration of abstractionism and a mirror into the heart of a woman who’s as haunted and haunting as Meena Kumari in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, as enigmatic as Rosy in Guide, and as voluptuous and famished as Smita Patil in Bhumika.

Indeed, Tabu, Santosh Sivan, and A.R. Rahman are the three heroes of the film.

Meenaxi is a film you’d want to clutch close to your heart for these three, and also for M.F. Hussain’s dexterous transposition of the painter’s skill onto celluloid, whereby every stroke of the brush engenders an atom of poetry.

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