Husain, born 102 years ago on this day, was taken to meet the actress in a hospital in 1967, when he was visiting the infant son of student and fellow artist Ila Pal.
Meena Kumari, who was also in the hospital recovering from an ailment, looked "absolutely bewitching", Pal writes in her book on the barefoot artist.
"Her husky mellifluous voice could really hold people in thrall, and that day she was determined to leave Husain devastated," she writes.
The Pakeezah actress held a silver betel-leaf box in her lap, her eyes subtly shaded with kohl, her long hair loose, fragrant and lustrous. When she offered Husain a paan, he "could barely speak", Pal writes.
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"What could I do? The moment I parted my lips to speak, kambakht ne is andaaz se meri taraf dekha, meri to zabaan hi kat gai! (she looked at me in such a way that I lost my voice)," Husain told Pal when she remonstrated with him later on his uncharacteristic silence.
"He had brothers and sisters to play with, but all he wanted to do was to paint," Pal writes.
He won a gold medal at a state annual art exhibition while in school, ranked second in his second year examination conducted by the J J School of Art, but came closest to art when he started working as a billboard painter in 1936 - sleeping on footpaths, barely managing two square meals a day.
During his first stint as a billboard painter, Husain learnt carpentry, the techniques of priming, stretching jute cloth and mixing colours.
His greatest takeaway from the job, however, was that it helped him learn how to paint large hoardings and posters, paving the way to eventual stardom.
But his mastery over his art did not prevent him from putting his "sprightly mischief" to use.
Pal, who first met him when she was studying art in what was then Bombay, writes about the time she walked into a tabla performance in an old haveli in Udaipur with Husain.
And Husain made no effort to dispel the impression.
"No, please ... Please continue," he said with a benevolent smile on his face when the musicians urged him to take over.
"This went on and on. Unnerved by the presence of a 'great tabla wizard' amongst them, they finally wound up quite abruptly," she wrote, recalling how he didn't say a word even when they began to touch his feet.
When Pal asked why he fooled them, Husain replied nonchalantly, "I was wearing my beard, my very own beard, and I was tapping my fingers on my knees the way I always do when I am impatient to leave. What wrong did I do?"
The artist developed a "beautiful rapport with Maria, the kind he had never enjoyed with any woman," Pal writes.
So much so, that after his return to India, he began writing letters to her, almost everyday, not only "expressing what he felt, but more significantly, sharing with her his thoughts on art, theatre and cinema, expanding his own horizons; crystallizing his own thoughts".
Husain had called up Pal to express his surprise at Maria's decision.
"Can you believe, Ila, that in the twenty-first century someone would return all the eighty-three paintings I gifted her forty-five years ago?"
Husain took custody of the works, which are now housed in the Maria Zukova museum in Dubai.
Husain, who died of cardiac arrest on June 9, 2011, in London, became one of the highest selling painters in India with one of his artworks fetching $1.6 million at a 2008 Christie's auction.
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