Zohra Sehgal - Career

Career

While still in Europe, she received a telegram from Uday Shankar: "Leaving for Japan tour. Can you join immediately?" On 8 August 1935, she joined his troupe and danced across Japan, Egypt, Europe and the US, as a leading lady, along with French dancer, Simkie. When Uday Shankar moved back to India in 1940, she became a teacher at the Uday Shankar India Cultural Centre at Almora. It was here that she met Kameshwar Sehgal, an young scientist, painter and dancer from Indore, eight years her junior, belonging to the Radha Swami sect. There was initial opposition from her parents, but they eventually gave their approval to marry. They married on 14 August 1942. Jawaharlal Nehru was to attend the wedding reception, but he was arrested a couple of days earlier for supporting Gandhi's Quit India Movement.

Zohra and Kameshwar Sehgal had two children, Kiran and Pavan. For a while the couple worked in Uday Shankar’s dance institute at Almora. Both became accomplished dancers and choreographers. Kameshwar composed a noted ballet for human puppets and choreographed the ballet Lotus Dance. When it shut down later, they migrated to Lahore and set up their own Zohresh Dance Institute. The growing communal tension preceding the Partition of India made them feel unwelcome. They migrated to Bombay, with one-year-old daughter, Kiran. By now, her sister Uzra Butt was already a leading lady with Prithviraj Kapoor's Prithvi Theatre. Ultimately, she too joined Prithvi Theatre in 1945, as an actress with a monthly salary of Rs 400, and toured every city across India with the group, for the next 14 years.

Also in 1945, soon after her arrival, she joined the leftist theatre group, IPTA, acted in several plays, and made her film debut in IPTA's first film production, directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Dharti Ke Lal in 1946; she followed it up with another IPTA-supported film, Chetan Anand's Neecha Nagar. In the same year, it became the first Indian film to gain critical international recognition and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Her involvement remained mostly with the theatre, though she did do a few films in between. During their stay in Bombay, the couple came to know many celebrities, including Ebrahim Alkazi, in whose play, Din Ke Andhere, she played "Begum Qudsia"; K.A. Abbas, in whose plays she acted at the IPTA; Chetan and Uma Anand in whose house the couple stayed when they first moved to Bombay, and his brother, Dev Anand his brother. She did the choreography for several Hindi films, including Guru Dutt's Baazi (1951) and the dream sequence song in Raj Kapoor's film Awaara. Kameshwar, on the other hand, became art director in Hindi films and later tried his hand at film direction.

Zohra Sehgal had been acting on the stage in different parts of India and putting up plays for jails inmates, including at Ferozepore jail. After staging a play, she stayed on to watch an execution.

After her husband's death in 1959, Zohra first moved to Delhi and became director of the newly founded Natya Academy. She then moved London on a drama scholarship in 1962. Here she met Ram Gopal, a India-born Bharatnatyam dancer, and starting 1963, worked as a teacher in the "Uday Shankar style" of dance at his school in Chelsea, during the short period of its existence. Her first role for British television was in a BBC adaptation of a Kipling story, The Rescue of Pluffles, in 1964. She also anchored 26 episodes of BBC TV series, Padosi (Neighbours; 1976–77). Her career in the next almost two decades remained sporadic, despite several small appearances in many films.

In London, Zohra got her first break in the films and was signed by Merchant Ivory Productions. She appeared in The Courtesans of Bombay directed by James Ivory in 1982. This paved way for an important role as Lady Chatterjee in the television adaptation The Jewel in the Crown (ITV, 1984). Thus starting the second phase of her career, as she went on to appear in The Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown, Tandoori Nights, My Beautiful Laundrette, et al.