The name Madhubala spells instant magic. Known as the Venus Of India her aura spilled all over the silver screen for a while. Then Venus vanished. The Madhubala magic remains alive forever, thanks to the enduring enchantment created by K Asif’s timeless opus Mughal-e-Azam. The magic of Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam is the magic of Hindi cinema. She epitomizes all the grace and feminine beauty that make those flickering images onscreen come alive as a collective emblem of the life force. And to think that she died so young.
36 is no age to die. Not for one of the most beautiful women God ever created.
The mighty Dilip Kumar once admitted to me that he was indeed in love with Madhubala. “She was very beautiful. Who wouldn’t fall in love with Madhubala? We first worked together in a film called Tarana where people noticed out combined energy. Mughal-e-Azam eclipsed all the other work that we did together.”
Madhubala is as much synonymous with beauty as Lata Mangeshkar is the epitome for melody. God knows, Madhubala turned Hindi cinema into an ambrosial paradise for as long as she remained alive. Short-lived as her stardom was, the reign at the top was swift and splendid.
Born in a conservative Muslim family, Madhubala started her career in 1942 at the age of nine in Basant. Her first hit as a grownup leading lady was Kidar Sharma’s Neel Kamal where both she and Raj Kapoor were introduced. It was Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal in 1949 which gave Madhubala the image of an ethereal unattainable yet warm and gregarious beauty who could be diva and the devil at the same time.
Lata Mangeshkar’s haunting melody Ayega aanewala added immense allure to Madhubala’s screen persona. The actress and the singer remained associated throughout Madhubala’s life and career.
The Late Nightingale recalled meeting the Venus socially. “She stipulated in her contracts that she wanted only me to do her playback singing. This was after the success of Aayega aanewala in Mahal, though I had sung for her earlier….During those days we’d meet socially quite often. That kind of camaraderie no longer exists. ..Madhubala mujhe bahut pyar se milti thi (she met with a lot of love)… Later Madhubala fell ill. But she continued to work. In fact, she performed to some of my best songs in Mughal-e-Azam while she was terribly ill. I didn’t meet her as often as I met Nargis. But she was always warm and friendly. Though everyone stressed on her breathtaking beauty Madhubala never took her looks seriously.”
Her looks were so overpowering that most people refused to perceive her as a brilliant actress with impeccable poignant and comic timing. If she could do the timeless romance so accurately in Mehboob Khan’s Amar and K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam she was also the perfect comedienne in her films with Kishore Kumar, like Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Half Ticket and Jhumroo. Some of these comedies were done at a time when Madhubala knew she was dying. She had been detected with a hole in the heart. The doctors gave her just a few years of live. She dragged on living, with no one but her husband Kishore Kumar to tend to her in her final days.
Before his death, Kishore Kumar remembered her screams of pain as she died little by little. The chiselled beauty who won not only Prince Salim’s heart but thousands of hearts in Mughal-e-Azam always had a problem with her heart. She had fallen in love with the Thespian Dilip Kumar. They were signed together for B.R. Chopra’s rustic romance Naya Daur. But when Madhubala refused to shoot outdoors due to her failing health, she was dragged to court where Dilip Kumar made a public declaration of his love for the beauteous damsel. “I will love her until the SHE dies,” thereby pre-empting her inevitable end.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
