Naman Ramachandran Bhanu Athaiya, the costume designer who became the first Indian to win an Oscar, for Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi” (1982), died at her home in Mumbai Thursday after a prolonged illness.
She was 91.Athaiya was suffering from a brain tumor for the last eight years, her daughter Radhika Gupta told news agency PTI.Athaiya was born in Kolhapur, western India, in 1929.
She began her career as a fashion illustrator for magazines before she moved to designing costumes for films. She made her debut with Raj Khosla’s C.I.D. (1956) and went on to design for some of the landmark films of Indian cinema, including Guru Dutt’s “Pyaasa” (1957) and “Kaagaz Ke Phool” (1959) and Abrar Alvi’s “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962).
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