Shakuntala Devi (4 November 1929 – 21 April 2013) was an Indian mental calculator, astrologer, and writer, popularly known as the "Human Computer".

Devi was a precocious child, and she demonstrated her arithmetic abilities at the University of Mysore without any formal education.

[1] She wrote several books in her later years, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology.

[6][7] Her father, C V Sundararaja Rao,[8] worked as a trapeze artist, lion tamer, tightrope walker and magician in a circus.

[4] In 1988, she travelled to the US to have her abilities studied by Arthur Jensen, a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

"[17] Shakuntala Devi explained many of the methods she used to do mental calculations in her 1977 book Figuring: The Joy of Numbers.

[28] Devi returned to India in the mid-1960s, and she married Paritosh Banerji,[29] an officer of the Indian Administrative Service from Kolkata.

[29][30] Their daughter Anupama Banerji claimed that Devi lied about her husband being gay to promote her book on homosexuals because her credibility on the subject matter was questioned.

[31][32] In 1980, she contested the Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate for Mumbai South and for Medak in Andhra Pradesh (now in Telangana).

[30] In addition to her work as a mental calculator, Devi was a notable astrologer and an author of several books, including cookbooks and novels.

Produced by Sony Pictures Networks Productions, the film streamed worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on 31 July 2020.