Mandakini (actress)

Yasmeen Joseph, professionally credited as Mandakini, is an Indian former actress. She is best remembered for her lead role in the 1985 popular film Ram Teri Ganga Maili.

Early life
Mandakini was born in Meerut as Yasmeen Joseph to a British father and a Kashmiri mother. At the young age of 16, she was discovered by film director Raj Kapoor and given the screen name "Mandakini".

Film career
Mandakini got her first movie in the Hindi film industry when she was cast in the lead role in the 1985 movie Ram Teri Ganga Maili by film producer-director Raj Kapoor opposite his youngest son Rajiv Kapoor. The film was a blockbuster, and it earned Mandakini a Filmfare nomination as Best Actress. She caused a stir after she was seen partially nude in two sequences of the film.

She then acted in a few more successful films, such as Dance Dance with Mithun Chakraborty, Kahan Hai Kanoon with Aditya Pancholi and Pyaar Karke Dekho with Govinda, but could not recreate the success of her first movie. The actress decided to bid adieu to the Bollywood industry after her 1996 film Zordaar.

Personal life
Mandakini married a former Buddhist monk, Dr. Kagyur T. Rinpoche Thakur, and embraced Buddhism. Her husband had gained fame in childhood as the baby featured in Murphy Radio advertisements in the 1970s and 1980s. The couple have a son named Rabbil and a daughter Rabze Innaya. After embracing Buddhism and becoming a follower of the Dalai Lama, Mandakini started running classes in Tibetan yoga, while her husband runs a Tibetan Herbal Centre.

Links to Dawood Ibrahim
In the early 1990s, she was briefly linked to gangster Dawood Ibrahim, when she was seen with the gangster in Dubai. While she admitted to meeting him, Mandakini strongly denied the rumours of any affair with him".