Sridevi: The original queen of Bollywood

Nonika Singh

Mannequin, almost doll-like, or age-defying timeless beauty, as I feasted my eyes on Sridevi at International Film Festival of India, Goa, just a few months ago I couldn’t quite decide what description truly fit her million-dollar dazzling persona.

But whichever way I was taken in by her star-lit aura as did hordes of cameraman whose camera shutters went aflutter with frenzied speed. She spoke little; in public, she was always reticent. In any case there was little indication of an underlying medical condition that one presumes might have led to a massive cardiac arrest that finally took her life in Dubai.

For someone who must have been under the watchful guide of dieticians/nutritionists, it’s hard to imagine the state of her heart affairs went unnoticed. In the end her heart may have failed her, as long as she lived she made millions of hearts go dhak-dhak.

Beginning her acting career at age four from “thunder thighs of South”, she transformed into this icon of Bollywood who delivered a hit after hit.

Her astounding acting prowess was never ever in doubt. Be it her heartfelt portrayal in ‘Sadma’ or goofiness personified in ‘Chaalbaaz’, the girl smitten by a man old enough to be her father in ‘Lamhe’, the ‘Hawa hawai’ girl of ‘Mr India’, by all yardsticks Sridevi was the original queen of Bollywood.

As long as she acted she reigned on the marquee and then after the megahit ‘Judaai’ in 1997, she gave it all for life in domesticity. Today stories about what a doting wife and mother she was abound. Onlookers may not have quite understood what she saw in the much-married producer Boney Kapoor. But he never left her side. 15 years later she made a stupendous comeback with ‘English Vinglish’ in a much slimmer avatar of herself. And he was there at Toronto film festival cheering for her as she was dubbed the 'Meryl Streep of India'.

Did she take her stardom and such effusive praise seriously? On the surface, certainly not and confessed to that rare ability for an exceptionally dedicated actor to snap out of her reel character. A director’s actor as she called herself or an instinctive one who knew exactly what was expected of her, she never failed to wow. Both cynical critics and fawning admirers alike, bowed before her versatility to transform, her malleability to get into the skin of characters (comic or tragic) she played.

Her latest outing ‘Mom’ did not set the box office ablaze but even in the not-so-critically-acclaimed film she held her own. Her death may have triggered a debate on the perils of looking good, without a doubt she was one of the most charming and enduring heroines of the Indian film industry. Had she lived we would have seen more of her in films such as sequel of ‘English Vinglish’ and rejoice in the debut of her daughter Jhanvi Kapoor in ‘Dhadak’ who, we so hope and wish, has inherited at least some of her acting genes. But even her lovely daughters can’t fill the space she occupied.

RIP Sridevi ... Cauldron’s song, 'Dreams die young', plays on the mind. “If I go down -- No regrets I take a sip with my last breath." Here’s raising a toast to her numerous films, 280 plus, a whole lot of them cine-buffs won’t forget in a hurry.