MF Husain, fida on nude goddesses

I’ve been told M F Husain is no more. But if I am not wrong there were lots more goddesses left to paint before he slept. He wouldn’t have bid adieu to this world without getting that simple chore done. Hindu India worships as many as 36,000 (or is it 36,000,000?) deities and a good percentage of them are goddesses.

MF had made it his god-given duty to paint goddesses in the nude. The ones he painted he immortalized them. And Mother India was his favourite nude. If you call that incestuous then never mind, he wouldn’t mind. Not then and definitely not now when he’s no more.

MF courted controversies. In that he was no different from Baba Ramdev. Where he was different was where the Baba went into contortions to convey a point, MF used slick-quick strokes of the brush to do just that. His prancing horses stood their ground as did his nude India. Bharat Mata in the raw was MF’s finest and fittest tribute to the country he was born in. The irony of MF taking his last breath in London shouldn’t be lost.

MF was born in British India and he died in what has now become more or less India in at least its demographic even if it’s still British in governance.

If you think I am not making sense then friends you have another MF on your hands. For like me or not I am in a way like MF. He too made no sense with many of his works. Those nudes and horses made sense only to the rabid rabble rousers who saw in them what most of you (forget me) didn’t and went on the rampage, raging against his depictions. I mean what is in the nude that gets certain people’s goats. In the nude is nothing. And MF if he wasn’t harangued for painting in the raw stallions why was he banished from the midst of hypocrites for painting goddesses in the nude. None of those goddesses sent a bolt of lightning to knock him out, off to kingdom come.

They say there were 900 people who lodged 900 cases against the barefoot genius for making a mockery of goddesses on canvasses that sold like what… hotcakes, if I may use that useless cliché one last time. I guess some people had nothing much to do except look at nude goddesses and sue. Now that MF has kicked the bucket, and silenced the racket around him, then I guess right now he must be in the company of those same goddesses, having a good laugh! What say?

Maqbool Fida Husain, for all the prancing stallions, you did paint a good nude goddess. There’s no taking away from that.