Amba Sanyal Biography 
Amba Sanyal is a theatre artist, stage actress and costume designer from Delhi. Her family belongs to Assam, and she is the daughter of legendary artist and painter of the 20th century - B. C. Sanyal. She received Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2008 for Costume design. Her husband K.T. Ravindran, is a noted architect and dean of School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. Her maternal aunt was married to younger brother of famous filmmaker – Shyam Benagal. Thus national award winning filmmaker Dev Benegal is her cousin.
She was born in 1945 in Delhi. She was born into a family of artists. Her father B. C. Sanyal was a great painter and sculptor of Assam origin, who moved to Lahore and later settled at Delhi. Her mother Snelata was a ghazal singer and theatre artist. Thus she too followed the same path and completed her studies from Delhi College of Art, Shantiniketan and Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris. Amba has been associated with many doyens of Indian theater as a stage actress and costume designer. She acted in the plays directed by Habib Tanvir, Ebrahim Alkazi, Amal Allana and Sheila Bhatia. She has also been associated with NSD as a costume designer.
Apart from acting in stage plays, she also acted in one movie - Ship of Theseus directed by Anand Gandhi. The film was premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, and received great critical acclaim. She played the supporting role of Bhanu Ajji in this film. She is a writer too, who published a book on Indian saris in three volumes. The book was titled - A series on Saris of India, which described saris of Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Bihar.
Published: N/A
Updated: June 19, 2016
