[4][5] She started her career as a journalist and producer of current affairs programmes on television and it was during this period, for an interview, that she met director Conrad Rooks who had received much acclaim for his film, Siddhartha (1972).
[5][6] Later this paved the way for her career as a documentary filmmaker and she made critically acclaimed documentaries, such as Chipko: A response to the forest crisis, Girl Child: fighting for survival, Punjab: a human tragedy and Indian cinema: the winds of change,[6] before making her first feature film, Miss Beatty's Children (1992), based on a novel of the same name by her.
[9] The film ran into trouble with the Indian Censor Board, but was eventually released after going to a tribunal where only a few audio cuts were made.
In November 2005, she received a serious brain injury when a Maruti Alto lost control and collided with her Toyota Landcruiser at Vasant Kunj in Delhi while she was returning from Indira Gandhi International Airport after a trip to Amsterdam.
[14][15] She never recovered from the coma and died of cardiac arrest at her Defence Colony home in the early hours of 1 October 2010 at the age of 52.