Vasundhara Das, acclaimed both for her acting and playback-singing, is popularly known as 'shakalaka' baby after her popular hit song. She was born in Bangalore as Hebbar Iyengar, in a conservative Brahmin family. Her first celluloid break as a singer was for the film 'Mudhalvan' for which she received the Film Fare Best Playback Singer Award 1999. The onscreen debut of this trained Hindustani classical singer came with the Tamil movie 'Hey Ram' (1999) opposite veteran actor Kamalhassan. She has acted in many South Indian flicks apart from Mira Nair's English film 'Monsoon Wedding' (2000). With her excellent voice, spectacular grey eyes, brown hair and a flawless complexion, Vasundhara has achieved a lot within a shot span of time. Music is the first love of this multi talented personality and besides her filmy numbers in several languages she has a music album to her credit called 'Meri Jaan'(2001). She has sung several singles as well. This graduate in Statistics and Mathematics, is a linguist who knows English, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, a bit of Malayalam and Spanish.