Bend it like Zohra

“I thought she was a Pisces,” Zohra Sehgal says with her quintessential wryness when her granddaughter is accused of being a lesbian in the 2002 cult-classic Bend It Like Beckham. As biji, the then 90-year-old actress breathes life into a small role with her comic genius.

Acting was not her first career choice, she took it up only in her mid-30s. Born as Sahibzadi Zohra Begum Mumtazullah Khan, the woman with an infectious smile was never the one to follow rules.

Zohra and her sisters attended Queen Mary College in Lahore, where women observed purdah. She moved to the UK, with trips involving stops at Quetta, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and a boat to Europe from Alexandria.

Her aunt had her join a ballet school in Dresden, Germany, which brought opportunities to travel with Uday Shankar’s troupe. Upon returning to India, she joined Shankar’s academy in Almora as a teacher and met Kameshwar Sehgal, a young man of varied interests.

Kameshwar was eight years Zohra’s junior and a Hindu no less. But they were young and in love. Convention, anyway, had not been something that Zohra was known to abide by too strictly. She liked bending the rules.

And so they got married and moved to Lahore. After the Partition, they moved to Bombay. This is where, after a lifetime of adventures, came Zohra’s tryst with acting.

Zohra began taking up roles in productions at the iconic Prithvi Theatre. Her film debut came soon with the Indian People’s Theatre Association’s Dharti  Ke Lal while Palme d’Or winner Neecha Nagar brought her critical recognition.

The parallel cinema movement was gaining steam. Zohra, with her theatre background and precise Urdu diction, was the perfect candidate. She later admitted that lead roles did not come her way in an industry obsessed with traditional good looks. “Mine is a face that sank a thousand ships,” she joked.

Another move followed and she was suddenly in London, making appearances in era-classics Doctor Who and Tandoori Nights as well as British films.

India did pull her back and roles began to come in more frequently. When she was not delivering drop-dead funny one-liners as biji in Bend It…, she was making audiences guffaw by gulping down kulfis as the toothless bebe in Veer Zara. She did not have one unfunny bone in her body and the comedian was finally shining through.

“I’ve lived to the fullest. I’ve squeezed the best out of life. A good husband, children, family and most importantly my work,” Zohra said in an interview, at peace with how life had treated her.

Be it Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan, those who worked with her remembered her as granny with the energy of a naughty young girl and someone whose Urdu pronunciation put them to shame.

Zohra would often recite poems from Faiz Ahman Faiz. ‘Mujh se pehli si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang’ is one of her most-watched performance poetry pieces. One can see the ecstasy on her face that she gets from a job well done. The artiste in her always found an outlet and the world was better for it.

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