Nilambur Ayisha: India actor who survived religious hate and bullets
By Imran Qureshi BBC Hindi
The year was 1953. Nilambur Ayisha, 18, was on stage delivering a dialogue when a bullet whizzed through the air.
"It missed me and hit the stage curtains because I moved while speaking," recalls Ayisha, now 87, sitting at her home in the town of Nilambur (which became part of her stage name) in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The shooter's attempt was just one among several - by religious conservatives who believed a Muslim woman shouldn't act - to force Ayisha off the stage.
But she went on acting, braving sticks, stones and slaps until, she says, "we managed to change people's attitudes".
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