I had never imagined I would have to write an obituary for someone who symbolised life. She symbolised life for me, throughout my growing up years, as she might have done for thousands of others. Whenever she came on screen, she would instantly bring it alive. She was lively. She was a livewire. She was everything life had to offer. She was Sridevi.
Nearly every Indian or Pakistani girl who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, imagined herself as Sridevi when she danced to “Mere haathon mein nau-nau choorhiyan hain”. Almost every college-going girl of that era, who perhaps had her first brush with love, wanted her lover to sing “Chandni, o meri Chandni”, for her. When young Indian women first took up corporate careers in the early 1990s, they wanted to be seen as the tough, no-nonsense professional like Sheetal from Sridevi’s 1994 blockbuster, Laadla, who would order you to “understand? You better understand!” And for the bold ones who dared to fall for men much older, Pooja from Lamhe became their reflection.
Starting her cinema career at a brazenly tender age of four in Tamil cinema with the movie Thunaivan in 1969, Sridevi died equally young on February 24 at the age of 54. Her start was as dramatic as her end. The news of her death felt so unreal to me as barely 24 hours before I read about her death, I was admiring her pictures from a family wedding in which looked like a queen adorned with a regal choker, jhumkas and maang tikka and dressed in a heavily embroidered mint silk lehenga, whose banarasi dupatta was casually strewn across her torso in a very Punjabi way, just like us Punjabi women carry our dupattas. Then came the most heartbreaking news about her death early in the morning on February 25 and a friend sent me her last video in the family wedding she was part of in the UAE, where she greeted other guests with a quick smile, even if she didn’t know them all, as she walked into the venue to the beats of the dhol, just like a typical Punjabi baraati would do.
Source: AAP Image/AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau
WATCH | At Dubai wedding, dancing #Sridevi hugged Boney Kapoor pic.twitter.com/ixhCztY9w2 — NDTV (@ndtv) February 25, 2018
I vividly recall when I was five, maybe six years old, the Yash Raj Chopra magnum opus, Chandni had been released. At that age, the image of a chiffon-clad Sridevi swaying against the snow-clad Swiss Alps was beyond my comprehension. But whenever there was an occasion to dance, my friends and I would break into an impromptu jig on “Merehaathonmeinnau-nauchoorhiyanhain”. And I, with the eye for detail that I was perhaps born with, would make sure I had nine bangles on each arm when I danced to it. On occasions that the count was any less, I would borrow them from the nearest lender available, even if they didn’t fit my small wrist. But I wantednine, because Sridevi said so.
Sometime before Chandni, had come Mr India. Many women wanted to be journalists (or “press reporters” as our tribe was mentioned in the movie) after seeing Sridevi play Seema who worked in a newspaper. And then of course, the young men of the time got a kick from her sensuous performance in the song, “I love you” that set fire to the rain under which it was filmed.
Sridevi was every naughty and sprightly young girl like Manju was in Chaalbaaz. An all-time favourite between my sister and I, who has been my playmate since she was born, Chaalbaaz filled our long, white-hot summer afternoons nearly every week or so. Every day, after we came back from school, my sister and I would eat our lunch in front of the TV, hoping to see some movie channel screen this movie. Every scene of this movie was jam-packed with fun, and the credit largely goes to Sridevi who had a terrific sense of comedy and comic timing, an area largely unexplored by female actors the world over. Chaalbaaz was also North India’s introduction to the larger-than-life film star of the South, Rajinikanth. 
Sri Devi’s eyes were the fulcrum of her screen presence. Big, bold, talking eyes. They spoke to you even before Sridevi’s character uttered a word. Coquettish, flirtatious, comic, romantic, tragic: her eyes were everything. They just vacuumed you in. In Nagina, one of her epic performances, her eyes took her craft to just another level when she wore enigmatic grey lenses and assumed the role of a naagin, a snakewoman. In one of her most unforgettable and inimitable performances, she danced like a snake dances in front of the been of a sapera (snake charmer) in the song “Main teri dushman, dushman tu mera”. She slithered around on the floor with her palms fanning out over her head, like the hood of a cobra with her grey eyes fixated at you from across the screen. This song also framed the childhood memories of most girls of my generation who would become naagins each time they danced to Sridevi’s tune. I would also imagine that the naagin dance without which any North Indian wedding is incomplete, is also inspired by Sridevi’s eponymous performance in this song.
Source: AAP Image/AP Photo/Kin Cheung
She resonated with nearly every young lovey-dovey couple in her famous songs like “Na jaane kahan se aayi hai” from Chaalbaaz. You felt like a daring journalist when you saw her dance to “Hawa Hawai” in Mr India. You threw caution to the wind and toyed with the idea of the young Pooja who had the gumption to express her love for a much older man in the dream sequence song “Kabhi main kahoon” and also admired the coy Pallavi, Pooja’s mother, also played by Sridevi, who danced in an Indian Classical dance style to “Morni baghan maan bole” from Lamhe. In unforgettable roles like the middle-class Kajal in Judaai who sells her husband for money but still loves him, she underlined the greed, more than the need, of every Indian salaried family for more money. She surely reminded you of at least one woman you knew closely who is mocked at for not knowing English-Vinglish. All these rather sandpapered performances came at a much later stage in her career, when she had established herself as an actor and dancer par excellence. However, the one groundbreaking performance that she gave at a nascent stage of her career that spanned half-a-century was the emotionally-jolting Sadma. A young Sridevi gave an astonishingly impressive performance opposite another institution of acting, Hamal Haasan, as she essayed the demanding role of a mentally-challenged girl in this movie when she was barely a few films old in Hindi cinema.
A fangirl like me who grew up on a staple diet of Sridevi’s performances, can keep going on and on about the powerhouse of talent that she was. It is however, not humanly possible to sum up even a slice of her career of 50 years in one article. I may not be wrong in saying that perhaps she was Indian cienma’s longest-serving actor. While writing this obituary, my eyes gave way to tears at least twice. I just don’t want to believe that Sridevi has actually gone hawa hawai…
