“I’m an international gypsy,” said M F Hussain in an interview recently in context with the forced exile from India, his country for the last ninety one years. The world famous modern artiste has always been prone to controversies. But the recent ones where he painted Mother India as a nude earned him the wrath of the moralists. Prize money as huge as Rs 51 crore was put on his head. Even the government was forced to take action against him prompting Hussain to leave the country.

He has been shuttling between London and Dubai for some time now and is increasingly becoming edgy to get back to India. Hussain’s fascination for Hindi films is well known. His obsession with Madhuri Dixit led to her acting in his first feature film as a director, ‘Gajagamini’. The movie failed at the box office but it was lauded for its intense poetic content. His next flirtation with silver screen ‘Meenaxi’ starred Tabu and Kunal Kapoor (More famous for his ‘Rang De Basanti’ act with Aamir Khan). It didn’t do any magic on silver screen either but one of the songs ‘Titli….’ Sung by Sukhwinder Singh with music by A R Rehman was coloured by the palette of life.

Hussain had handpicked Shreyas Talpade after watching Nagesh Kukoonoor’s ‘Iqbal’ for essaying himself in the film ‘The Making of a Painter’. The film hasn’t started yet. Hussain got back into limelight recently when he revealed that he had watched Sooraj Barjatya’s ‘Vivaah’ nine times and was in awe of the character Poonam (Amrita Rao) in the film as she portrayed true Indian woman’s attributes. And this is not the last we’ve heard from the famous artiste…There’s more to follow…