Bhanu Athaiya

Bhanu Athaiya remembers the night of April 11, 1983, when she became the first Indian to hold aloft an Oscar statuette winning the award (with John Mollo) for best costume design for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi

As I watched the Oscar ceremony unfold on television on Monday morning, I experienced the same rush that I had felt all those years ago.

Sitting at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles on Oscar night in 1983, I had not felt any anxiety as I knew I had given Gandhi my best. As I took my seat, the other nominees in the category told me they thought they did not have a chance. They predicted the Oscar would come my way because the canvas of the movie was so huge. It gave me a quiet confidence. So when my name was announced, I was quite calm.

I had worn a blue silk sari to the presentation and made a short “thank you speech”.

I don’t remember much of the post-awards parties which passed off in a daze. I do not remember who all I met that night, though the whole place was teeming with Hollywood greats.

Winning the Oscar was more of a personal satisfaction. I was already an established designer in the Indian film industry. I was an Indian designer and Gandhi was about Indian costumes — I was okay with that as international projects removed from Indian themes did not beckon me. Before Gandhi, I had done another international project, Siddhartha. After Gandhi, I went on to do Land of the Tiger.

I have watched Slumdog Millionaire, but since I’m a voting member of the Academy and reviewed the film as part of my job, I am sworn not to make any public comments about it. But I will say this much that the film, though a huge hit in the West, did not work much in India. Part of the reason perhaps is because unlike in the West, there is no novelty in the subject for us.

The awards for Slumdog Millionaire are a tribute to Indian cinema — to (AR) Rahman — and to the unsung technicians of the Indian film industry through (Resul) Pookutty’s achievement. Rahman is a genius and I am glad the world knows him as such today. Here in India, we always knew.

Like Rahman, who composed the Oscar-winning score in 20 days, I too finished my research and work on the costumes for Gandhi in three months flat. It was a massive project that required perfection to the last detail. It was difficult because we had to show 50 years of the Mahatma’s life in various locations, including Dandi and South Africa. There were sequences with hundreds of people in period costumes. I had to do the job single-handed. I had to compete with an international crew and the challenge was to match their standards in a limited time.