While the stamp commemorating the gorgeous Madhubala comes not a day too soon, why is it that the government forgot another even more gorgeous and iconic actor, Devika Rani, who was awarded the Padma Shri by Pandit Nehru and whose birth centenary falls on March 30 2008? She was also the first recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1969 but is better remembered for her sizzling kiss in the 1933 Karma.

Devika was feisty, ambitious, ruthless, sensual, intelligent and beautiful — a woman aware of her own potential. She had many successful avatars during one lifetime. Her father Colonel M.N. Chowdhury was the first Indian Surgeon General of Madras. She was also the grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore and could have dined off that for the rest of her life, but she determinedly carved out her own space.

Leaving home before she turned 20, a spectacularly good looking working woman, she won a scholarship to RADA in London, and pursued textile designing, as well as her acting ambitions. The breakthrough in her life as well as in the history of Indian cinema came when she met the brilliant Himansu Rai, who was 16 years older than her.

Himansu, like her a Bengali from a comfortable background, had acted in and produced two notable films with German collaboration, Light of Asia and Shiraz, by the time he met Devika. He had already married a German stage actress, Mary Hainlin, and had a daughter by her, Nilima. But he thought nothing of abandoning mother and child to marry Devika after he fell in love with her.

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