Playboy “Bunny, model, actress Katy Mirza had another claim to Bollywood fame: a role — albeit indirect — in unseating prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Katy played a politician’s personal secretary in the controversial film Kissa Kursi Ka, a political satire perceived as an attack on the Emergency. The controversy surrounding the film — and the response of the authorities — helped the Janata Party decimate Indira in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections.
Katy, daughter of an income tax officer, was born in Aden as Katiya before her family moved to the UK in the 1960s. An aspiring graphic designer in 1972-73, she was working as a receptionist at the London Hilton hotel when a Playboy Club employee saw her and asked her to audition. After meeting Hugh Hefner, Katy became a Playboy “Bunny” in 1973.
She would soon move to Mumbai, attracted by fame and stardom. She also featured in Ramesh Bhal’s Kasme Vaade, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee.
Katy played Ruby, a politician’s personal secretary, in Kissa Kursi Ka, which featured Raj Babbar and Shabana Azmi. A commission had investigated the film and found that the plot resembled the life of Sanjay Gandhi. The film’s prints were confiscated and burnt.
When the Janata government came to power, it set up the Shah Commission that looked into the alleged excesses committed during the Emergency. Sanjay was held guilty of burning the prints of the film. The Supreme Court refused to grant him bail and he spent a month in Tihar jail.
V.C. Shukla, the information and broadcasting minister during the Emergency, also faced trial for alleged destruction of the prints and was jailed for two years. The verdict was later overturned.
Katy never made it big in Bollywood but there were rumours that she was close to the likes of Hussein bin Talal, the then king of Jordan.
She was seen on television in an episode of The Garland (1981) and again in The Magician of Samarkand (2006).
For the most part of the ’70s, Katy adorned magazine covers and centrespreads. It was rumoured that she had her breast size surgically reduced and prompted columnist and novelist Shobhaa De to write in the “Eyecatchers” section of India Today magazine in 1978 about Katy’s “well-publicised operation to reduce her bustline by ten fulsome inches”.
Calling it “Operation Bust”, De had said Katy had emerged “slimmer, lighter and with a big load off her chest”.
Katy had been mentioned in Sudeep Chakravarti’s novel Tin Fish, which was published in 2005. Her photographs were part of the photo essay book India: Then and Now, put together by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and Vir Sanghvi.
Katy died in London in early 2017. She was 61 and was survived by son Firoz, an actor.
Actress Anju Mahendroo was in touch with Katy Mirza when she had been admitted to a London hospital in 2017. Mahendroo had recalled, “We used to WhatsApp each other’s jokes and then one day, she wrote she would not be able to WhatsApp back as she was seriously ill.” According to Mahendroo, Katy had led a happy life after her high-profile career, “Yes, she had a nice home near Sussex and was devoted to her son.”
