Their first collaboration came when she worked as a costume designer for Himansu when he was launching his production, A Throw of Dice or Prapancha Pash. Incidentally, while we in India have largely ignored this technically brilliant silent film, BFI screened it last summer during London’s India festival.

Why have we also forgotten that Karma, Devika’s debut film, was the first English language Indian film to be released in Europe and was screened specially for the Royal Family at Windsor? Or that Himansu and Devika were part of a completely global cinema — their own team included directors like the German Franz Osten. Devika assisted Marlene Dietrich in the German film, Das Blaue Engel, and absorbed film techniques from Fritz Lang and Pabst.

The reviews she received in the British press have not been written about any other Asian actress. Even the normally obstreperous Daily Mail succumbed to her charm after viewing Karma at Marble Arch: “The beauty of her face, the grace of her gestures, and the cultured modulations of her voice are qualities that place her apart from the ordinary cinema star... will create a sensation...”

With Hitler’s ascent to power, Himansu and Devika returned to India and founded Bombay Talkies. While there has been some debate about her contribution to the studio, Bombay Talkies would not have become what it did without her. Though widowed at the age of 32, she continued at the helm, despite the gossip and attempts to dislodge her.

Men kept falling in love with her and on one occasion during Himansu’s lifetime, she ran off with her Jeevan Naiya co-star, Najamul Hussain, to Calcutta. The humiliated Himansu persuaded her to return to him and Bombay Talkies, even though she had already negotiated to join another production house. The problem was that while Himansu could not imagine life or cinema without her, she could imagine both without him. Indeed, after Himansu’s death, Devika was remarried within five years. However, this time she quit cinema and joined her new husband, the wealthy Russian artist, Svetoslav Roerich, and spent the rest of her life as a near recluse, in Kulu and in Bangalore.

... contd.