She was a favourite of the Art Cinema in India where she played powerful roles in films like Koshish, Umrao Jaan, Mirch Masala and Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!.
[7] Her notable Gujarati films were Moti Ba, Malela Jeev and Bhavni Bhavai, while her well-known plays include Dinglegar, Doll's House, Vijan Sheni and Girish Karnad's Hayavadana, directed by Satyadev Dubey.
The audience queued up to watch her play the lead in Mena Gurjari, which is still one of the most popular Bhavais along with sister Shanta Gandhi's Jasma Odhan.
[14] In her mid-40's, she made a comeback to films, two decades after her debut, with Basu Bhattacharya's Uski Kahani (1966), for which she won the Bengal Journalists Association Award.
She made four films in the 1960s, including Hrishikesh Mukherjee's classic Satyakam (1969), Saat Hindustani (1969), starring Amitabh Bachchan in his debut role and the Merchant Ivory Productions, The Guru (1969).
[citation needed] Films that stand out in this era are Gulzar's Mausam (1975), for which she earned her first nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress, Kinara (1977) and Kitaab (1977), and sweet comedies like Basu Chatterjee's Chitchor (1976), Gharaonda (1977) and also in an art cinema classic, Shyam Benegal's Bhumika (1977), which saw her standing tall alongside another acting legend, Smita Patil, in her career's best performance.
Just as the 1970s ended, she was seen in the comedy classic, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Gol Maal (1979), where she essayed the role of Kamala Shrivastava, a middle-aged woman who sportingly plays mother to Amol Palekar, who went on to direct her in his 1985 film, Ankahee.