Welcome To Zasha

Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal is a producer, director and actor on stage and the screen with over 75 credits to her name in India and abroad. She has worked with acting legends including Jane Fonda, Prunella Scales, Richard Johnson, Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Marissa Tomei and James Ivory, amongst others. In 1996, she started her own production company, with her son Dr Kaizaad Kotwal, called Poor-Box Productions, which has given India some of its most memorable and long-running plays of the last 4 decades, including the seminal, audience-favourite The Vagina Monologues, which is entering its 24th year of shows. Other plays include: Art, Shirley Valentine, Victoria and Abdul, I Was Young … Now I’m Wonderful, and most recently Eden Creek, Bengal, amongst many others. Mahabanoo is also a social justice activist, particularly in the area of women’s empowerment and ending violence towards women and girls. To further this work, she created The Make-A-Difference Foundation, which she also co-founded with her son. The foundation has created a variety of projects and programmes in urban schools and colleges, and also in economically disenfranchised women in the “bastis” of Mumbai and rural areas. She also raises funds to help organizations dealing with and survivors of gender-based violence. She has received numerous awards for her work in this arena, most recently the Lifetime Achievement Award (a joint initiative of Population First and the UNFPA) and the Karmaveer Puruskar Maharatna Award (a Rex and UN initiative). Mahabanoo was chosen by Femina Magazine as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in India in 2007. Human rights activist and author Zerbanoo Gifford, in her book Secrets of the World’s Inspirational Women, has featured Mahabanoo as one of the 200 Most Inspirational Women from around the World.