A still from Hema Malini’s ballet, Mahalaxmi at the Nehru Centre, the sets of which was designed by Pallavi Gurjar

In the four years that set-director and production manager, Pallavi Gurjar worked on Feroz Abbas Khan’s play Tumhari Amrita — where Farooq Shaikh and Shabana Azmi read out letters to each other on stage — there’s one incident that stayed with her. “It was the last show of Tumhari Amrita at the Taj Mahal in Agra in December, 2013. Despite playing the same role for almost 20 years, Shaikh, like a rookie, looked at the director asking for permission if he could start. The way he always had. He was one of the most humble actors and a director’s delight,” Gurjar recalls. Two months after the last show, Shaikh succumbed to a heart attack.