Two city-based poets come together to share verses of the late cine icon, Meena Kumari, where participants will walk back in time along sites and locations in the city that impacted her life
Meena Kumari. Pic courtesy/Intach Mumbai
A couple of years ago, Vasvi Kejriwal, who runs Fresh Mint, an initiative to share the many histories and delights of poetry, stumbled upon a book of poems by the late actor Meena Kumari (born Mahjabeen Bano) who wrote poetry under the pseudonym ‘Naaz’.
A previous session near Meena Kumari’s bungalow, Iqbal, in Bandra
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This was a consolidated book of poems in English translation as well as transliteration, worked upon with attention and careful consideration by the scholar Noorul Hasan. Although known for portraying roles that carried melancholy and grief, Meena Kumari was much more than the tragedy queen of 1960s Hindi cinema. This quest to understand the layers beneath her persona led Kejriwal to put together a walk with Saranya Subramanian, founder of The Bombay Poetry Crawl.
Walk leaders guide the participants around locations in the suburb
For Subramanian, who has been conducting poetry walks across the city for five years, Meena Kumari was “a new portal into the world of Bombay poetry.” So far, her crawls have included explorations through the lens of the 20th century poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jussawalla, Eunice De Souza, Arun Kolatkar, and Dilip Chitre. This Urdu poetry focus offered a window into a new community of poets who were writing in a language other than English.
Participants outside the Cozihom residence of the actress
The two will be leading the walk this Sunday as part of their collaboration with INTACH Mumbai. The route has been mapped out by connecting some of the residences where the poet-actress stayed. When they read some of the material on her life and visited places where Meena Kumari lived, they realised that each residence also reflected a new era of her life. “Not many know that as a child, she was the breadwinner of the family,” informs Kejriwal, who will begin the session from the first place the actress moved to after spending her childhood in a Mumbai chawl.
Saranya Subramanian and Vasvi Kejriwal
Subramanian adds, “We also get to understand the changing streetscape of Bandra, from her first bungalow, now a beautiful quaint little place, to Cozihom Apartments up the hill. You get an idea of the socio-economic changes in this part of the city over the years.”
On: April 7; 8 am to 10.30 am
Meeting Point: Mehboob Studios, Bandra West.
Call: 8087773299
Cost: Rs 800 (members); Rs 1,000 (non-members)
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