Bhanu Rajopadhye Athaiya, a colossus of costume design, who became India’s first Oscar winner for her work in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), and whose chic couture in blockbusters such as Waqt (1965) blazed fashion trends, passed away in Mumbai on Thursday. She was 91.

Her daughter Radhika Gupta told TOI on phone that Athaiya died in her sleep. “In 2012, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She had been bedridden since 2016 when her right side got paralysed,” she said.

Athaiya was cremated at Chandanwadi.

In the foreword to her autobiography, The Art Of Costume Design (2010), Attenborough described her as “the revered doyenne” of costume designers. “It took me 17 long years to set up Gandhi, my dream film, and just 15 minutes to make up my mind that Bhanu Athaiya was the right person (for the job),” he wrote.

The Kolhapur-born costume designer’s career, spanning 56 years and over 100 films, reads like a catalogue of Bollywood’s best and biggest: Shri 420, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Sangam, Guide, Waqt, Ek Duuje Ke Liye, Nikaah, Lagaan.

“According to Yash ji (filmmaker Yash Chopra), girls in Delhi bought movie tickets for their tailors so that could see the designs and replicate them,” wrote Athaiya, who was married to lyricist Satyendra (Anhonee, Naubahar, Radha Krishna). He passed away in 2004.

It is sad that Athaiya didn’t receive the Padma Shri. “Being a proud Indian, she was very disappointed that her own country didn’t recognize her,” Gupta said.

Athaiya’s work reflects her versatility, her ability to painstakingly authenticate any period or people. For Lagaan, she framed the 19th century colonial India’s look. Always eager to learn and inquisitive, she was dedicated to her work. On Guru Dutt’s advice, she visited Calcutta's old mansions for Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam and travelled to the desert of Rajasthan for Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera.

Athaiya’s father was a self-taught artist. Books on Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt and other European painters lay scattered in her home. “They were my comic books,” she told this reporter in an interview in 2010. Her arts teacher noticed her gift for painting. She earned her diploma and a gold medal at JJ School of Arts in 1952. She exhibited her paintings alongside F N Souza, M F Husain and S H Raza.

But slowly she moved away from painting, started working as an illustrator in fashion magazines and then opened her own boutique. That’s where she met heroine Kamini Kaushal and launched into designing outfits for movies beginning 1953 (Shahenshah and Aas).

In 2012, this reporter spoke to her again, this time on the phone. It was about returning the Oscar. The statuette was couriered in a special container to its original owner, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles. “I wanted the trophy to be safe in future and in the right hands.”

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Academy Award-winning costume designer Bhanu Athaiya passed away on October 15, 2020, at the age of 91. She had been diagnosed with benign brain tumour in 2012 and her daughter, Radhika Gupta, had been by her side since then.

Thirty-seven years ago, on April 11, 1983, she made history at the 55th Annual Academy Awards, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, when she won the Best Costume Design Award for Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. Athaiya earned India its first Oscar statuette, sharing the win with her British counterpart, the late John Mollo. She held the distinction for 26 years, until 2009, when A R Rahman won for Best Original Score and Best Song, Resul Pookutty for Best Sound Mixing, and Gulzar for Best Song. However, she continues to be the only Indian woman to win an Oscar.

In April 2013, when Athaiya was celebrating 30 years of her historic win, recalling the victorious moment, she’d said, “On the way to the awards in the limousine, the film’s writer John Briley turned to me and said, ‘The win will be yours.’ I asked him why he thought so and he said, ‘Your canvas was so huge.’ Later, as I sat with the other nominees in my category, some of them turned to me and said the same thing. I did not let any of this affect me. I’d done my work and had decided that now it was for the world to decide whether I deserved to win or not. When they called my name, I was in a daze. I don’t even recall who handed me the award. All I managed to say was ‘Thank you Sir Richard for focusing world attention on India. Thank you Academy.’”

When Athaiya and Mollo received their nominations, Columbia Pictures decided it would be Athaiya who would go up on stage to receive the trophy, were they to win, because it was her work that defined a major portion of the film’s costumes. In December 2012, Athaiya returned her Oscar trophy to the Academy following the brain tumour diagnosis. At the time she had said, “I do not trust anyone in India to keep it. If Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medal could be stolen from Shantiniketan, what is the guarantee that my trophy would be safe? In India, no one values such things and we lack a tradition to preserve things”.

A true patron of arts, she had great regard for her contemporary, the late costume designer Mani J Rabadi. She admired Vidya Balan’s turn in The Dirty Picture and termed her to be a ‘classic Indian face’. She loved mangoes and would wait all year for summers to relish aamras. Once I visited her with some kheer and sabudana khichdi, which she really appreciated.

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In her memoir, The Art Of Costume Design, Bhanu Athaiya recalled being the only Indian on the sets of Richard Attenborough's 1982 film, Gandhi. Her job, as costume designer for the film's Indian characters, earned India its first Academy Award (and the only one bagged by an Indian woman).

While most pertinent, it was only one among an array of accolades earned by Athaiya, who passed away yesterday in her sleep at the age of 91. The veteran costume designer had apparently been bedridden for three years, and battling a tumour for eight, only years after she released her memoir, chronicling some of the most fascinating aspects of being part of the industry.

Credited for both, replicating attires (in a bid to authentically depict eras, and the society's castes and class), and redefining them (having invented the 'Mumtaz sari', complete with ready-made pleats), Athaiya is often aptly described as a "genius". "She was magical. I haven't had a better 'look' in any film," says Dimple Kapadia, whose character Reva was brought to life by Athaiya's apparels. "She was flawless. Lekin is set in the desert state of Rajasthan, but it wasn't a typical Rajasthani fabric that she used. It was a gorgeous cotton fabric. The character had to be established by using only one colour and without prints. But she still created the look beautifully, making sketches, and doing a lot of research. Apart from listening to the brief, she always interpreted characters and created costumes accordingly," says the actor of Lekin, which earned Athaiya a National Film Award for Best Costume Design.

The fact that Athaiya was a trendsetter finds credence in the testimony of her contemporary, designer Xerxes Bhathena, who draws our attention to the ubiquitous Amrapali outfit, first made popular by Athaiya in Vyjayanthimala's Amrapali (1966). "After that, it was in every film, including those of Sridevi and Hema ji [Malini].

Nobody knew what Amrapali was until Bhanu defined it. She was such an exquisite perfectionist! Apart from costumes, she would carry jewellery in one bag, and sketches in another. We worked together in Sultanat [1986]. I was designing Sridevi's costumes, and she, for the rest of the cast. She came to me and said, 'Xerxes, thodi toh history ko daad [respect] diya karo.' I said kaun dekhta hai? I have to make the actress look glamorous. But, she was a perfectionist who would research immensely. She has dressed almost all the leading ladies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s," he says, adding that the diamond-studded costume designed by Athaiya for Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram is preserved at R K Studios. Guru Dutt's CID (1956) was the former fashion illustrator's stepping stone to Bollywood. In a career spanning nearly five decades and over 100 films, she worked with filmmakers like Raj Kapoor, Kamal Amrohi, Yash Chopra, and B R Chopra.