I have an uncanny feeling that the seed for this book was first planted in my mind the day Madhubala died in 1969 at the young age of 36. Still in my teens, the full gravity of her death did not strike me with full force at the time but the prospect of not getting to see a paragon of beauty like her in any forthcoming movies, did distress my friends and I no end. Much later in life I realized that it was not us alone who found it hard to forget her but almost everyone who knew her or her movies.