Her childlike attitude reflected the spirit of life she embraced till her last breath. Just couple of months back, when she celebrated her 102nd birthday on April 27, her picture of cutting the cake rather in an aggressive style proved how determined she was to defeat the cycle of life and death. The grand old lady of Indian cinema, Zohra Sehgal, breathed her last on Thursday evening. She died of a cardiac arrest.
Sehgal was born to Zohra Mumtaz (Sahibzadi Zohra Begum Mumtaz-ullah Khan’) in 1912 in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She was one of seven children of a land-owning family of Rohilla Pathans, of Mumtazullah Khan and Natiqua Begum, belonging to Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
She started her career in 1935 as a leading dancer with the Uday Shankar Ballet Company and travelled the world over. In 1945, she joined Prithviraj Kapoor’s Prithvi Theatre group on a monthly salary of `400.
In her career spanning almost eight decades, she acted in a number of Bollywood and Hollywood movies like Veer-Zara, Saaya, Cheeni-Kum, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, The Vengeance of She, Never Say Die and Bend It like Beckham.
In 2008, Sehgal was named the ‘laadli of the Century’ by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF)-laadli Media Awards. She also received the Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan.