For Pooja, the pain of losing her mother before she turned 50 still lingers, but there is also pride and peace in knowing that Protima left the world the way she always wished; free and unbound.
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Sometimes, the people who live the brightest lives choose to leave the world in the most unexpected ways. For actress and filmmaker Pooja Bedi, her mother Protima Gauri remains that shining, untamed spirit, one who lived fearlessly, loved fiercely, and walked away from the world just as she had always dreamt: by becoming one with nature.
Protima was not an ordinary woman. She was a bold model in the 1970s, when Indian society was still adjusting to the idea of women breaking barriers. Later, she reinvented herself as a classical Odissi dancer and founded the iconic dance village Nrityagram.
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But what truly set her apart was her refusal to live by rules she did not believe in. Long before “open marriages” were spoken of openly, she and actor Kabir Bedi embraced that lifestyle in the 1970s. Their union eventually ended in 1977, but not before they had two children together, Pooja and Siddharth.
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In a conversation with ‘SCREEN’, Pooja Bedi looked back at her mother Protima Gauri’s extraordinary life and equally extraordinary death. The actress described Protima as “a woman who lived life on her terms and literally died on her terms too.”
Protima passed away in the mountains near Himachal, her body never recovered. For Pooja, the pain of losing her mother before she turned 50 still lingers, but there is also pride and peace in knowing that Protima left the world the way she always wished; free and unbound.
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“She would often say she wanted to die out in nature, not in some crematorium with rituals that felt meaningless to her,” Pooja shared. “She wanted her body to just merge with the universe, and that’s exactly what happened. Her body was never found, but that’s because she became part of the earth, part of the cosmos. That was her grand finale.”
The emotional weight of Protima’s departure was made even heavier by the fact that Pooja’s younger brother, Siddharth, had died tragically a few years earlier. Siddharth, diagnosed with schizophrenia, died by suicide at the age of 26 in 1997.
For Pooja, her mother’s passing felt almost like the closing of a chapter. Protima had sensed her time might be near. Before leaving for Kullu, she gave Pooja her jewellery, property papers, and every important document she owned.
“She just said, ‘You never know, darling,’” Pooja recalled. “She told me, ‘I’ve handed over Nrityagram to Lynn Fernandez, Siddharth is no more, you’re my only mooring. I want you to let me go.’”
What followed was a parting gift only a mother like Protima could leave behind. From the Valley of the Gods, she sent her daughter a 12-page letter; part memoir, part farewell. In it, she recounted her childhood, her marriages, her children, her dance, and the many turns of her remarkable life.
She ended the letter with words that Pooja carries in her heart even today: “I’m in Kullu, and may all the gods and goddesses know of my eternal gratitude. I’m happy. I’m so very, very happy.”
Those words, Pooja says, are the essence of who her mother was; grateful, unafraid, and fiercely alive. “What a journey, what a life, what a woman, what a mother,” she saidx.
Protima challenged the roles women were expected to play in her time. She redefined love, marriage, art, and even death on her own terms.
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