Later this month, on March 19, Sai Paranjpye turns 88. Age hasn’t dimmed her shine or reduced her energy, as she kept an audience enthralled at a reading from her work in a show titled Darwal (Fragrance).

Dressed in a stylish kaftan, she stood for the first half of the show as she read from her memoirs; during the second half, she sat down and spoke about her plays and films. The show was sold out, which is not surprising; she has multitudes of fans of her films, plays and writing, even though she has been away from the spotlight for several years.

Breaking through the industry’s ‘concrete ceiling’

Paranjpye always bristled when she was called a woman director, but the fact is that she heralded the entry of female filmmakers when she made Sparsh in 1980. Before then, there had been a few female film producers and a couple of directors, but through the 1960s and 1970s there was a void.

The industry’s male domination is no secret, but when Paranjpye crashed through—not the glass but the concrete ceiling—women had not made inroads into Bollywood as directors. The industry simply did not trust women with ideas or money—it is better today, but still a long way to go.

She and others who followed—Aparna Sen, Kalpana Lajmi, Vijaya Mehta and Aruna Raje—got small budgets to make what were then labelled ‘parallel’ or ‘middle-of-the-road’ films.

A progressive upbringing

Paranjpye was born to a Russian father, the artist Youra Sleptzoff, and an........

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