The brightest of them all

Saibal Chatterjee

Sridevi was a resplendent roop ki rani who spread chandni every minute she was on the silver screen. As an astoundingly versatile actress, she had fans across the country eating out of her palm through the 1980s and 1990s. But down South, Sridevi’s reign as a trailblazer began nearly two decades earlier.

Without her luminous presence in many a Hindi megahit of the 1980s, the decade would have been a washout for mainstream Bollywood. During the period, which is often described as erratic in terms of the quality of films that the industry churned out, she was the real propellant of the collective dreams of a nation, swaying to such chartbusters as “Naino mein sapna sapnon mein sajna” (Himmatwala, 1983) and “Kaate nahin kat-tey yeh din yeh raat” (Mr. India, 1987). She embodied the fantasies of a whole generation of moviegoers.

Starting off as a child star at the age of four in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films, Sridevi was a dynamite in front of the camera, combining sex appeal with intensity and gravitas to scale the sort of heights that nobody from the South, not even Kamalhaasan and Rajinikanth, managed to.

In a five-decade career, she acted in 300 films. If we factor in the 15 years that she was missing from the scene after her marriage to film producer Boney Kapoor, she did all those films in 35 years, which makes it an average of nearly 10 films a year. She was an extremely busy actress but never one to rest on her laurels. She controlled the momentum of her super-successful career with a great sense of the ephemerality of stardom. 

She is gone too soon. She had many years of work left in her. Her untimely death has robbed Indian cinema of the massive possibilities that English Vinglish (2012) and Mom (2017) indicated. These two films, which she did after a 15-year hiatus, marked the emergence of a mellow actress with five decades of experience ready to take herself to a higher zone. Alas, that was not to be!

Not that Sridevi did not realise her full potential although regrettably not all of her filmmakers, be they in Mumbai or in the South, did justice to her enormous talent. Her chameleon-like ability to transform herself for any role saw her put her stamp on a wide array of memorable screen characters, beginning with her first adult lead role in 16 Vayathinile in 1977.

The following year, the Tamil hit was remade in Hindi as Solva Sawan, Sridevi’s Hindi debut. The film was a boxoffice dud and it was not until 1983’s Himmatwala that the Sivakasi-born actress got going on the national scene. Dubbed ‘Thunder Thighs’ for her vigorous hip-wiggling numbers, she had all of India in thrall. But Sridevi wasn’t the kind who would let the industry stereotype her.

While southern directors continued to cast her in lowbrow mass entertainers like Tohfa, Maqsad and Mawali, Sridevi appeared in the 1983 film Sadma (Moondram Pirai in Tamil) and demonstrated a deeply sensitive, highly skilled side of her persona.

Just consider the range of films she did. From the fiery Army and Sherni, to the pensive Sadma and Lamhe and to the frolicsome Himmatwala to the comic Chaalbaaz: absolutely nothing was beyond Sridevi’s ken. She could sink into the skin of any character that she was called upon to play. Nobody could do that with the passion and power that she invariably brought into play. Painfully shy in real life and, therefore, an interviewer’s nightmare, she was, on the screen, a high-voltage livewire that throbbed with energy. Sridevi will be impossible to replace, let alone surpassed.