“MF Hussain is as big an artiste as Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso and Van Gogh only we don’t realize it now” said Shabana Azmi while inaugurating his exhibition in Dubai. The year was 2004.
In the following years, a controversy related to his painting blew out of proportion and Hussain was forced out of India. He died in June 2011 a lonely man in a foreign country, far away from his family and loved ones.
In my long career I met MF Hussain a couple times. The first time, when I was visiting Bakul Patel and he dropped by suddenly. The first thing MF Hussain did on arrival anywhere, was to go the washroom and clean his feet. Everyone knows that he traveled barefoot everywhere, to parties, to funerals, to movies and to restaurants.
To be continued