Farewell to a superstar

Film diva Sridevi is no more. Our sense of loss is all the more as she died at the relatively young age of 54. A human dynamo, she was bubbling with life and vitality at a Dubai wedding just hours before her tragic end. From her humble roots in Tamil Nadu’s Sivakasi, she first expressed her talent on the silver screen when just four, and went on to create an impressive body of work in many languages. She graduated from Tamil, where she showed her versatility, into Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada cinema, before conquering Bollywood. Her last appearance as an actor will hit the screens later this year in a Shah Rukh Khan movie, which will be a real tribute to her half century in cinema, with breaks of course to raise a family.

The extent of her conquest to become arguably Bollywood’s first female superstar best reflects the range of her acting ability, including the comic side of her persona where she excelled, even doing a fine cameo as Charlie Chaplin. A woman of boundless energy active till the end, while also promoting daughter Janhvi’s film career, Sridevi’s death is being mourned across India. Her lively screen presence was a natural extension of her personality. She leaves behind in her huge bank of movies several roles that will remain etched in memory, beginning with a major role in Moondru Mudichu, with Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth in Tamil. The stunned disbelief her death leaves in an array of co-stars is an index of how valued she was as a performer. She was a wonderfully pan-Indian success story, and we would like to remember her that way.