Biography

Sheila Awasthi nee Dalaya (credited as Sheela Delaya) played the role of Suraiya, the cheerful and lively younger sister to Madhubala's beautiful Anarkali in Mughal-e-Azam. Mughal-e-Azam took over a decade to produce and, after its 1960 release, remained one of India's highest-grossing and most-loved movies for many decades thereafter.

Sheila was born in Peshawar to the Reverend Alexander Manmohan Dalaya, MBE and Sonu Dalaya nee Gadre. Reverend Dalaya was the Principal of Peshawar's Edwardes College and, as fate would have it, taught Prithvi Raj Kapoor, one of Indian cinema's most successful and admired actors. Prithvi Raj Kapoor played the role of Akbar in Mughal-e-Azam.

Sheila was very young when Partition forced her family to move to India, initially to Bombay and then to Ujjain and Indore. Throughout her childhood, Sheila was enthralled by stage and screen and, while still in school, saw an advertisement for a Mughal-e-Azam screen test in Bombay. She convinced her father to take her there and won the role of Suraiya. K. Asif, the movie's director, was so impressed with her work that he picturized a solo song on her.
- IMDb mini biography by: SKA

Sheila's granddaughter and namesake, Sheila Awasthi, is also an actress appearing in Army of the Dead (2021).