Indian math wizard Shakuntala Devi, often described as a “human computer”, is the subject of a new film that premieres on streaming giant Amazon Prime Video on Friday.
Bollywood actress Vidya Balan, who plays the math genius, has described her as a “small-town Indian girl who took the world by storm”.
Shakuntala Devi’s dazzling skill with numbers earned her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records and turned her into a minor globe-trotting celebrity.
In the official trailer of the eponymous biopic, Balan is seen cheekily asking a roomful of people whether she should “give the answer from the left to right or from right to left” when asked to multiply two multiple-digit numbers.
A video of the real-life Shakuntala Devi doing the same in an interview with Canada’s Asian Television Network (ATN) has been watched more than half a million times since it was uploaded in April