‘Bhanu Athaiya made India cool 60 years ago’

In a corner of The Aguad, Goa, stands a black velvet female mannequin, on which is draped a metallic bikini-armour — a helmet with bison horns on its head, a curtain of chain mail covering the crotch. For decades, Athaiya has been relegated to little more than a footnote in Indian art history — the answer to “who was the first ever Oscar-winner from India” in general knowledge books. One person from a ministry did tell us, ‘Aap yahan chhod jao, hum dekhenge kya kar sakte hain.’ My mother very firmly told me, ‘I will set fire to it rather than give it away like this.’” When pop culture met art history At The Aguad, a museum housed in the Port and Jail complex, you can see the results of this painstaking work, which has been enthusiastically encouraged by Prinseps owner Indrajit Chatterji, and to whom Gupta has signed over Athaiya’s estate. “When we were studying Bhanu Athaiya’s archives, the family photos, personal paraphernalia, costumes and sketches, the one thing that came through is that India is the land that inspired her,” Gohil says, explaining the theme of the exhibition. And you have this person who made the country cool in all these ways 60 years ago!” Indeed, a survey of her work across a whopping 240 films — beginning with Devendra Goel’s Aas in 1953, right up to Jaypraad Desai’s Marathi language Nagrik in 2015 — reveals her to be that rare figure in popular culture who had an art historian’s eye and a researcher’s rigour.