Alcohol addiction was both her escape and her end, Meena Kumari's life as the tragedy queen

Though Meena Kumari got the title of Bollywood’s Tragedy Queen for her brooding characters, her actual life reflected much of that misery. Behind the success and stardom, she fought deep loneliness, depression, and emotional isolation, often saying her life was almost an endless drama script.

A writer at heart, penning under a pseudonym. In addition to performing, Meena Kumari was a poet who wrote personal Urdu verse. Under the pseudonym Naaz, she put poetry to her heartbreak and turmoil. Her works, many of them posthumously published, revealed a piece of her inner life that fame had blinded.

A marriage that was both painful and ended in separation. Her marriage to the filmmaker Kamal Amrohi was a professional win-win for her and a personal one that caused her harm. Allegedly controlling and neglecting, the relationship gradually unraveled. Despite her love for him, she was subjected to restrictions and emotional distancing from him until they separated, after which her descent into alcoholism gained speed.

Ironically, Meena Kumari died just weeks after the release of her career-defining film named Pakeezah. For one, the film took her over a decade to complete — much less a life — due to her own problems with personal issues and her marriage leaving, but it was a hit. Sadly, she didn't live to see the full effect of this success and succumbed to liver cirrhosis on March 31, 1972, at only 39.

In her final years, Meena Kumari’s health deteriorated precipitously over the course of her decades, partly because people remember her for the chronic alcoholism to which she had been addicted as a way to escape her loneliness and emotional anguish. By the time Pakeezah was released, her body was too brittle to heal, and she died before her time in a hospital in Mumbai.