MUMBAI: India’s first Oscar winner, costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, passed away after prolonged illness on Thursday. She was 91. She passed away peacefully in her sleep, her daughter Radhika Gupta said. Eight years ago, she was diagnosed with a tumour in her brain. For the last three years, she was bedridden as one side (of her body) was paralysed.
Bhanu Athaiya had won the Academy Award in 1983 for the Best Costume Design for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982) along with John Mollo.Born in Kolhapur, Athaiya began her career as a costume designer in Hindi cinema with Guru Dutt’s 1956 superhit C.I.D. and went on to work in over 100 films. In a career spanning five decades, she had designed costumes for iconic Hindi films like Pyaasa, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Guide, Aamrapaali, Satyam Shivam Sundaram and Agneepath.
She was a noted associate of directors like Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Raj Khosla and later, Yash Chopra and Ashutosh Gowariker. Her last credited work was on Gowariker’s Swades (2002), starring Shah Rukh Khan. She had won two National Awards — for Gulzar’s Lekin (1990) and Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001).
Bhanu had returned her Oscar trophy to the Academy in 2012 for safe-keeping. Her book, The Art of Costume Design, was published by HarperCollins in 2013. She felt that in India, filmmakers never gave due importance to costume designing. She also abhorred the current trend to shop abroad and put things together.