India’s first actress Kamlabai Gokhale played a man so well, a woman fell for her

But Kamlabai had already made a name for herself in theatre before entering cinema. She was among the sought-after artistes of her time. In an era when men routinely played female characters on stage, Kamlabai did the reverse — she took on several male roles in plays and travelled across the country with her theatre company.

She was so convincing in her male roles that, during one performance, a married woman became convinced that Kamlabai was actually a man and fell in love with her. The woman eventually left her home and followed Kamlabai all the way to Dharwar.

Recalling the bizarre incident in an interview with filmmaker Reena Mohan in 1991, Kamlabai said: “There was this girl in Rajapur who thought I was a man. I was playing a male character in the play Manapman. I was playing the character of Dhairyadhar. She fell in love with me. She left her home and followed me to Dharwar.”

Eventually, Kamlabai had to find a rather extraordinary way to convince the woman that she was, in fact, a woman.

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“The day she came to meet me, I removed the pagri from her head and mine. She disguised herself as a male to come see me. She was a married woman but she had run away. I took her into a room where both of us undressed. Then she understood or else she would have gone mad.”

Kamlabai, much like her mother, never set out with a plan to become an actor. Circumstances led both women to the stage and eventually to cinema. Durgabai had left an abusive marriage and moved to Bombay with her daughter. Recalling her mother’s struggles, Kamlabai said: “My father was a bad man. He would often beat my mother to half-death. My mother chose art and culture over prostitution to survive.”

It was this difficult journey that eventually led Durgabai to theatre — and, through a chance encounter with Phalke, to the history books. When Phalke found Durgabai and Kamlabai, Indian cinema was barely beginning. Durgabai Kamat became the first woman to appear on the Indian screen, while Kamlabai became widely recognised as India’s first female child actor.

And the legacy didn’t end there. Kamlabai went on to have a career spanning more than six decades, while her son Chandrakant Gokhale and grandchildren Vikram Gokhale and Mohan Gokhale continued the family’s long association with acting.