India's first ever Academy award winner Bhanu Athaiya dies in her sleep

Costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, who became the first Indian to win an Oscar, passed away on Thursday after prolonged illness. In an exclusive interaction with ETimes, her daughter Radhika said,  that she passed away in her sleep this morning. She added that she had slight fever and cough and was taking antibiotics. It was kind of pneumonia. She won the Best Costume Design Oscar for her work in the film ‘Gandhi’. She managed to give the characters in British director Richard Attenborough’s Mahatma Gandhi biopic an authentic look. 

In her memoir The Art Of Costume Design, Bhanu mentioned how she was the only Indian working on the project in which all the heads of the department like the director, scriptwriter, cameraman, production and set designer came from England.Bhanu Athaiya worked with all top filmmakers including Oscar nominated film ‘Lagaan’. She designed costumes for films like ‘Pyaasa’, ‘Chaudvin Ka Chaand’ ‘Kagaz Ke Phool’, ‘Waqt’, ‘Raat Aur Din’, ‘Guide’, ‘Teesri Manzil’, ‘Johny Mera Naam’, ‘Karz’, ‘Ek Duuje Ke Liye’, ‘Razia Sultan’, ‘Agneepath’, ‘Ajooba’ and ‘1942 – A Love Story’ and others. The last film for which she designed costumes were Aamir Khan’s ‘Lagaan’ and Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Swades’.