The Meena Kumari Shirt

The famed actor was born Mahjabeen Bano to Ali Bux, who worked in Parsi theater, and Iqbal Begum, a stage actor in Bombay, on August 1, 1933. Though she was reluctant to be a child actor, financial constraints led her to audition, and she landed her first role at age 6 in Vijay Bhatt’s “Farzand-e-Watan” (1939). She took on the stage name Baby Meena by 1940 and became Meena Kumari by 1952. “The first day I trotted along to work, I little imagined that I was saying goodbye to the normal pleasantries of childhood,” recorded biographer Vinod Mehta. The actor starred in over 90 films, earning the moniker “Tragedy Queen.” She found success with “Baiju Bawra” (1952), which Vijay Bhatt also directed; “Parineeta” (1953); “Chandni Chowk” (1954); and “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962). The first two even won her Filmfares for Best Actress, including in the first year of the award. In 1952, Meena Kumari married Kamal Amrohi secretly. Amrohi directed her in the cult classic Pakeezah (1972), in which