I have heard Gandhi speak, says Bhanu Athaiya

I have heard Gandhi speak, says Bhanu Athaiya

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Daily News & Analysis

By Gauri Sinh

Mumbai: When Hollywood’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, take place later this week, there will be one person in the country for whom the fuss about the ceremony is old hat — costume designer Bhanu Athaiya. She was the first Indian to be honoured with an Oscar for her work on Richard Attenborough’s biopic Gandhi, based on the life of the Mahatma.

A still from Gandhi. Bhanu Athaiya received an Oscar for her work on the movie.

Way before Slumdog Millionaire brought Rahman his double haul of golden statuettes, way before Freida Pinto’s fashion sense became the stuff of magazine covers, Athaiya’s style prowess was already being lauded on the world stage.

“I was brainwashing myself as the names were being announced,” Athaiya reminisces about her Oscar win at the 55th Academy Awards. “Telling myself not to get excited, to play it cool…” When she won (with fellow designer John Mollo) it became “too good to believe.”

“When I went up to collect my award, Sir Richard was blowing kisses from the front row,” she laughs. “I said, ‘Thank you, Sir Richard Attenborough for focusing world attention on India. Thank you, Academy!’”

This vignette and others like it are all encapsulated in Athaiya’s new book, The Art of Costume Design, which boasts of a foreword by Attenborough himself. It encapsulates her work in the film industry: she was already 25 years in the profession when Gandhi happened. But her awe for the Mahatma is intact. “See that paper cut work (she points to a beautiful etching of Gandhi in her studio), I made it when I was eight years old. That’s how far back my connection to Gandhi goes. Ben Kingsley (he played Gandhi) was surprised at that. But the subject of the film is something you cannot catch up with overnight.”

Who better than Athaiya to know this — she had come to Mumbai from Kolhapur just as India was entering its tryst with destiny, embracing a hard fought independence. “I was witness to the struggle,” Athaiya says. “I have heard Gandhi speak.”

Though she is famous for the Oscar win (and has been a voting member at the Oscars for 26 years), Athaiya’s fashion career spans nearly six decades. She has seen Bollywood fashion evolve from the nascent industry it was, just after independence where she ‘was the bridge between the tailor and the director’ to the sophisticated Now, of big budgets and bigger canvases. A whole lifetime of fashion in film. But she’s not done yet. “I’m always in the frame of mind of a giddy-headed 16-year-old,” she smiles. “My eyes open to beauty — ready always, to get carried away by it.”