CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 27 of 120

Correct — D, Vidya Balan. The biopic is Shakuntala Devi, a Hindi-language film written and directed by Anu Menon, with Vidya Balan in the title role. It was produced by Sony Pictures Networks India with Abundantia Entertainment and Genius Films, shot between September and November 2019, and planned for a cinema release in May 2020; when the pandemic closed theatres it went straight to streaming on 31 July 2020. Sanya Malhotra plays Shakuntala Devi's daughter Anupama, Jisshu Sengupta her husband Paritosh Banerjee, and the story is built around their strained relationship rather than around the arithmetic alone. Vidya Balan was nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress for the role.

• (a)Madhuri Dixit — Not connected with this film. She belongs to a different set of roles of the period.
• (b)Rani Mukherjee — A plausible guess because she had recently played a teacher in a film with a similar feel, but she has no part in Shakuntala Devi.
• (c)Tabu — Not in this film. The confusion is easy because she and Vidya Balan have both taken strongly written central roles in the same period.

Shakuntala Devi, born at Bangalore in 1929, was a mental calculator known worldwide as the human computer. She toured from childhood demonstrating extraordinarily fast arithmetic, was tested at universities in Britain and the United States, and entered the Guinness Book of Records for multiplying two thirteen-digit numbers in her head in under half a minute. She also wrote on mathematics for children and on astrology, and contested a parliamentary election. She died in 2013.

Awards, films and appointments make up a predictable slice of the CDS general knowledge paper, and the questions are usually set within a year of the event, so the practical study habit is to keep a running list of biopics with their subjects and lead actors. What makes this particular item worth more than a memory drill is the subject: a candidate who knows only the answer knows the actress, while one who knows Shakuntala Devi can also handle a question on the human computer, on the Guinness record, or on her books. Present-day position: 2020 was a year of direct-to-streaming releases because cinemas were shut, and this film is one of the standard examples of that shift.

• Shakuntala Devi is a 2020 Hindi biographical drama directed by Anu Menon, with Vidya Balan in the title role.
• It was released directly on streaming on 31 July 2020 after its planned May cinema release was cancelled because of the pandemic.
• Sanya Malhotra plays her daughter Anupama, and Jisshu Sengupta plays her husband Paritosh Banerjee.
• Shakuntala Devi, born in Bangalore in 1929 and died in 2013, was known as the human computer.
• She entered the Guinness Book of Records for multiplying two thirteen-digit numbers mentally in well under a minute.

• Guessing by general impression of which actress takes strong central roles. Three of the four options fit that description.
• Confusing this film with other biographical films released around the same time.
• Assuming a 2020 film must have had a cinema release. Many went directly to streaming.

As a who-played-whom item on a recent biopic, or as a matching item pairing films with their subjects.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Shakuntala Devi, the subject of the 2020 biopic, was known worldwide by which epithet?

  • (a)The Missile Woman
  • (b)The Human Computer
  • (c)The Nightingale of India
  • (d)The Metro Man

  Answer(b) The Human Computer — she earned the name for feats of mental arithmetic, including multiplying two thirteen-digit numbers in her head in under a minute.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 2020 film Shakuntala Devi was directed by which one of the following?

  • (a)Zoya Akhtar
  • (b)Meghna Gulzar
  • (c)Anu Menon
  • (d)Gauri Shinde

  Answer(c) Anu Menon — she both wrote and directed the film, which stars Vidya Balan in the title role.