Sai Paranjpye

Sai Parānjpye (born 19 March 1938) is a movie director and a screenwriter in India. She is the director of award-winning movies, Sparsh, Katha, Chasme Buddoor, and Disha.

The Government of India awarded Sai, the Padma Bhushan title in 2006 in recognition of her artistic talents.

Early years

Sai Paranjpye was born on 19 March 1938 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh to Youra Sleptzoff and Shakuntala Paranjpye. Youra Sleptzoff was a Russian watercolor artist and a son of a Russian general. Shakuntala Paranjpye was an actor in Marathi and Hindi films, in 1930s and 40s, including in V. Shantaram's Hindi social classic, Duniya Na Mane (1937), and later became a writer and a social worker, nominated to Rajya Sabha, Upper house of Indian Parliament and awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1991.

Sai's parents divorced shortly after Sai's birth, and Sai's mother raised Sai in the household of her own father, Sir R. P. Paranjpye, who was a renowned mathematician and an educationist and who also served in 1944-47 as India's High Commissioner in Australia. Sai thus grew up and received education various cities in India, including Pune, and a few years in Canberra, Australia. As a child, she used to walk up to her uncle, Achyut Ranade, a noted filmmaker of the ’40s and ’50s, up...
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