Protima Bedi Biography

Protima Bedi or Protima Gauri was born in 1949 in Haryana to a trader father and a Bengali mother. She was one of the well-known models of 1960s. During her modeling days she met Kabir Bedi. They got married in 1969 and had two children Pooja and Siddhartha.

A chance visit to Bhulabhai Memorial Institute changed her life forever. She was so impressed after watching the Odissi dance performance that she decided to learn Odissi and became the disciple of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. Inspite of the complex rhythm and sophisticated hand and eye movements of the Odissi she did not lose heart and continue to practice 12-14 hours a day. To attain the proficiency in dance she also started learning Abhinay from Guru Kalanidhi Narayan of Madras.

This worshipper of dance started her own dance school at Prithvi Theater in Mumbai which later came to be known as the Odissi Dance Center. She set up ‘Nrityagram’, a dance village on the outskirts of Bangalore to impart training to students . This dance village established on the principle of guru shishya parampara was inaugurated on May 11, 1990.

In 1998 Protima went to Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and after a landslide she could not be traced. This model who devoted herself completely to the sadhna of the Odissi was lost forever.

Timepass, her autobiography, was posthumously published by her daughter Pooja Bedi.