Pia Benegal designs costumes for Samvidhaan

Pia Benegal, well known costume designer and daughter of Shyam Benegal, has been painstakingly working on the costumes for Samvidhaan, a 10-part series directed by her father. Samvidhaan has been showing on Rajya Sabha TV since 2 March, 2014 every Sunday at 10 am and 10 pm. Avers Pia, “I was asked to work on Samvidhaan as the costume designer and recreate costumes for each character as realistically as possible. My tailors worked tirelessly on this project. Looking for specific accessories was a painstaking yet exciting exercise. Gradually I saw all my characters come alive. Each one of them began to look more and more like the original people whom we know as the members of our Constituent Assembly.” Interestingly, Pia designed and created authentic costumes of the period ranging from dhotis, kurtas, waistcoats, sherwanis, double breasted suits, South Indian long coats, saris, a variety of headgear etc. Discussions, drafting and framing of Samvidhaan took 2 years 11 months and 17 days. The series, made after talking to 294 members of the constituent Assembly, tells the exciting and dramatic story of the making of our Constitution through debate. 155 members participated widely in the debates and made submissions. It’s not new that Pia has been associated with films and TV. Her first film was Antarnaad. This experience took her to NIFT, New Delhi, where she studied and did a diploma in fashion designing. And soon projects like Sardari Begum, Making of the Mahatma and Zubeidaa followed to mention a few with her father, and filmmakers like Mani Ratnam(Dil Se ) Govind Nihalani (Drohkaal), Dev Benegal (An English August) and Kaizad Gustad (Bombay Boys). Currently Pia is also working as the costume designer for Siyaasat, a TV series directed by Siddharth Anand Kumar.