Uma Anand (1923 – 13 November 2009) was an Indian journalist, actress, and a broadcaster in the mid-1900s. She was born in 1923 in

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

, Punjab, British India to a prominent Bengali Christian family. One of her sisters,

Indu Mitha Indu Mitha (née Chatterjee) (born 1929) is a Pakistani exponent of Bharatnatyam and one of only two in the nation (the other being Sheema Kirmani). She is also a faculty member at the Rawalpindi campus of the National College of the Arts. Pers ...

, is a Bharatnatyam exponent based in Pakistan. Uma was the wife of the prominent Bollywood film director Chetan Anand (married in 1943) and mother of

Ketan Anand Ketan Anand is an Indian film director. He is son of film-maker Chetan Anand (director), Chetan Anand and actress Uma Anand. He is the cousin of director Shekhar Kapur. He has directed the movies Toote Khilone and ''Shart'' and was associate ...

and Vivek Anand. She worked as an actress in ''

Neecha Nagar ''Neecha Nagar'' () is a 1946 Indian Hindi-language film, directed by Chetan Anand, written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Hayatullah Ansari, and produced by Rashid Anwar and A.Halim. It was a pioneering effort in social realism in Indian cinema a ...

'' (1946). She also wrote ''

Taxi Driver ''Taxi Driver'' is a 1976 American film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, and Albert Brooks. Set in a decaying and ...

'' with her husband Chetan and her brother-in-law Vijay Anand, that starred her mother's cousin

Kalpana Kartik Mona Singha (born 19 August 1931), also known by her stage name Kalpana Kartik, is a retired Hindi film actress. She starred in six films in the 1950s. She is the widow of the late Hindi film actor and film maker Dev Anand. Mona Singha was a ...

and her brother-in-law

Dev Anand Dharamdev Pishorimal Anand (26 September 1923 – 3 December 2011), better known as Dev Anand, was an Indian actor, writer, director and producer known for his work in Hindi cinema, through a career that spanned over six decades. He was ...

. After estrangement from her husband, she became a companion of

Ebrahim Alkazi Ebrahim Alkazi (18 October 1925 – 4 August 2020) was an Indian theatre director and drama teacher. A rigid disciplinarian, he instilled in his acting students an awe and reverence that they still carry with them, with several of them havin ...

. She died on 13 November 2009.

Life

From 1965 to 1981, Anand was an editor of Sangeet Natak, a journal published by the

Sangeet Natak Akademi Sangeet Natak Akademi (The National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama in English) is the national level academy for performing arts set up by the Government of India. History It was set up by the Indian education ministry on 31 May 1952 and be ...

. She also wrote many children books that were translated and published in different Indian languages by

National Book Trust National Book Trust (NBT) is an Indian publishing house, which was founded in 1957 as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education of the Government of India. The activities of the Trust include publishing, promotion of books and reading, ...

of India. Her last book, ''Chetan Anand: The Poetics of Film'', was co-authored with her eldest son Ketan Anand, and it portrayed life in the theatre and cinema in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

, India in the early 1940s and 1950s.

Filmography

* '' Neecha Nagar (1946)'' * '' Taxi Driver (1954)''

References

Actresses from Lahore Journalists from Lahore 1923 births 2009 deaths 20th-century Indian actresses Actresses in Hindi cinema Indian film actresses {{India-actor-stub