India, Oct. 12 -- MF Husain is undoubtedly India's best known and perhaps most highly regarded modern artist. As an editorial in this newspaper put it last week, he is "arguably the most inventive artist of Indian modernism". This is why it's not just sad but upsetting that an MF Husain museum will open next month in Doha and not in the country of his birth. The truth is Husain was hounded out of India and lived his last years in exile in Doha and London. Hindu critics of his paintings made it impossible for him to live in this country. Husain Sahab, as I called him when I interviewed him in 2000, was an extraordinary man. We should have been proud to own him. Indeed, to boast of him. Not turn our back and pretend we've forgotten him. Again, as this paper put it, "India let go of Husain, though his works are with private collectors and galleries in India, who are diffident about celebrating his brilliance and versatility for political reasons." Those who recognise good art need no introduction to Husain Sahab. Let me, instead, tell you about his character and the life he led. It's the stuff fables are made of. For a start, Husain Sahab created his own birthday. He wasn't exactly sure when he was born. Not just the date but even the year. So when he needed to apply for a passport he made it up. As he told me, he'd just seen the film, Come September and decided September was the month he would choose. He then hit upon 17 as the date, calling it "sweet 17". The year he chose was 1915. But he added "I could be two years younger or two years older." Husain Sahab said he was born into "a very middle-class family in Maharashtra". His father was a time-keeper in a textile mill and later an accountant. His grandfather was a tinsmith. Their home had no electricity. His father used to study under the light of street lamps. "That's why in my paintings you will notice the significance of the lamp. Light is always there." Husain had a lifelong fascination for the number 10. As he explained, the very first painting he ever sold earned him ten rupees in 1933. Years later he was selling them for 10 lakh. Today it could be tens of crores. Many will remember Husain Sahab's paintings of Mother Teresa. Others will remember his horses. He was famous for both. I asked him why the Mother Teresa paintings never carry a face. He said it's because when he painted her he did so with his own mother in mind. She died when he was a year and half old and he had no memory of what she looked like. Thus, the Mother Teresa portraits are faceless. In the 1930s, Husain went to Bombay and painted Bollywood film hoardings, whilst balancing precariously from the scaffolding. But this wasn't his first choice. Fate drove him to it. "I was perfect at painting portraits in 15-20 minutes. I used to paint exact life-like portraits". He would wander around Crawford Market asking people if he could paint their portrait. For each commission he would earn fifteen rupees. But when Husain Sahab discovered that people wanted "rosy cheeks and all that", which he found "so boring", he switched to Bollywood film hoardings. It was after Independence that Husain became a household name. In the years that followed the cognoscenti wanted to own his paintings. In the early 2000s he directed his first film. Film, he said, combines all the elements of art - speech, music, action, colour and much more. Painting, in comparison, is one dimensional. He viewed directing films as a graduation to a higher level of creativity. Now imagine how much we could learn if the Husain museum were in Delhi or Mumbai. Instead we've lost it. Actually, we've let it slip out of our hands. Today we can only rue what might have been....