Hidden Faces, Bare Bodies

They were the inspiration for the much acclaimed Marathi film Nude last year. For three generations, the women from the Naidu family have posed as nude models for Mumbai’s art students and painters. Their’s is a sad life, lived in near-poverty and secrecy.

- Mayukh Majumdar

Sometime in 1965, renowned modernist artist, Akbar Padamsee, decided to spend two weeks at the historic Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. Padamsee had received a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship to go to the United States of America, a report in Livemint states. When it was time for him to check out of the hotel, the future Padma Bhushan awardee realised that he did not have enough money to pay the bill. In barter, he presented the owner David Bard with a 10x3ft painted canvas which would later come to be famously called Reclining Nude. In 2011, almost five decades later, the Padamsee canvas would be sold for a then-record price of 1.4 million dollars to the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

But this is not where our story begins.

It begins with the search for a 24-year-old woman named Tulsi Naidu. Perhaps, I should have begun searching for her sooner but when I turned up at Sir JJ School of Arts on a wet Friday afternoon, I was met with circumspect suspicion from the professors. I didn’t understand it then but I don’t blame them for their caution now.

Why do I want to interview Tulsi Naidu? Why not interview many of the other women who model for the students of the college? Is it because like many journalists, I am sniffing around for controversial news?

My fellow journalists who appear to have come to the college seeking to write articles don’t appear to have either done their job properly or kept up their side of the bargain. After having travelled the entire area between Sir JJ School of Arts and Excelsior Theatre, I finally had a number.

The voice that greeted me on the opposite line was exceedingly youthful. I was surprised because my research had revealed that Tulsi Naidu was a mother and I did not expect her to sound so young. I thought she’d be at least 35 years of age. The voice couldn’t have belonged to a woman above 25.