Born a princess, Maharajkumari Binodini Devi (7 February 1922–17 January 2011), broke free from the constraints of royalty to live to the full—the life of an enlightened commoner, and emerge as an iconic pioneer in the evolution of Manipuri modernism, through her outstanding contributions to fiction, theatre, cinema, poetry, visual arts and dance. Collaborating with filmmaker Aribam Syam Sharma, she wrote the original scripts for his award winning films, Imagi Ningthem (My Son, My Precious, 1982) and Ishanou (The Chosen One, 1992), and the ballet film Sangai that won the British Film Institute’s Outstanding Film of the Year Award in 1984. Binodini Devi, who wrote under the name of Binodini, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award given by India’s national academy of letters in 1979 for her novel The Princess and the Political Agent. She completed her memoirs, Maharaj Churachandgi Imung (The Maharaja’s Household) in 2009.