BOLLYWOOD LOSES ITS FIRST FEMALE SUPERSTAR
Life is so short and death, so unpredictable. She was dressed like a royal queen just a few days ago but has now left for her heavenly abode. In this tribute to her, JYOTHI VENKATESH says that he has no words to describe how he felt when he heard that at the age of 54, Sridevi died after drowning at her hotel room in Dubai.
Everyone knows that she was a legend, an icon. The vacuum she left will never be filled. Everyone knows what a switch on, switch off actress Sridevi has been, but I am extra lucky in the sense that I could act, yes you read it right, I could face the camera as Sridevi’s uncle in one of the episodes of the serial Malini Iyer directed by Satish Kaushik, which marked Sridevi’s debut on Sahara TV in 2004.
When I had asked why she opted for being a part of the serial Malini Iyer, Sri had quipped then, “Whether the screen is big or small, acting is acting. I opted to be away for eight years when I was carrying my child Janhvi sometime after I married Boneyji after my last film Judaai was completed. As both my kids were grown up and could easily fend for themselves, they did not need a full-time mother to look after them. Hence, I decided to try my hand at acting with Malini Iyer, which boasts of music by Himesh Reshammiya and was the first ever serial produced by my husband Boneyji. I had to do a lot of homework to prepare for that role even though it was a tailor-made role for me since I am a South Indian, and I could fit into the role with effortless ease. It has been my endeavour to get into the skin of the character that I set out to play.”
Sri had started her career as a child artist with Kandan Karunai in 1967 at the age of four, and then as a lead child artist in Thunaivan (Tamil) at the age of five in 1968 wherein she played the role of young Lord Muruga. She was also seen as child Lord Muruga in Adi Parashakti (Tamil) with Jayalalitha around the same time
She gained immense experience as an artist by working with the likes of Sivaji Ganeshan, M.G.R and others, who ruled the rostrum then as the monarchs of the trade. In 1970, she made her debut in Tollywood with Telugu movie Maa Nanna Nirdoshi. Her performance in the Malayalam film Poompatta won her the State Award for the Best Child actor in 1971.
Nam Naadu (1969), Prarthanai (1970), Babu (1971), Badi Panthulu (1972), Bala Bharatam (1972) and her Kannada debut Bhakt Kumbara (1974), are also her most memorable performances as a child artist.
I have vividly fond memories of Sridevi who I had first met way back in 1975 when she was a child star and a precocious one at that. It was on the sets of K.S. Sethumadhavan’s Julie in Chennai’s Vijaya Vauhini Studios when Sri was just a twelve-year-old kid frolicking around on the sets. Her mum had approached me on the sets and pleaded with me to write about her daughter. She wanted Sri to act in Hindi films when she grew up, though she did not know even a single word of Hindi at all.
Thirteen-year-old Sridevi starred in Moondru Mudichu in Tamil opposite Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. The film directed by K Balachander shocked people since she played the stepmother to Rajinikanth. It catapulted her to the top and soon she found herself cast in Solva Sawan opposite Amol Palekar. It was the remake of the Tamil hit 16 Vayathinile, which also starred Sridevi.
I remember meeting a shy and reticent Sridevi again in 1979 at Hotel Natraj in Mumbai after she completed her debut film Solva Sawan. The film was an unmitigated failure, which prompted Sridevi to continue to work in only Tamil and Telugu films instead of trying to sign more Hindi films. However, her doting mother did not give up her lofty idea of making her daughter a Bollywood star and she bounced back with vengeance four years later with Himmatwala opposite Jeetendra. The iconic number Naino main sajna became nothing less than an anthem as the image of a bejewelled Sridevi dancing was etched in a million minds forever.
Sridevi did 15 more films with Jeetendra. While Jaani Dost (1983), Justice Chaudhry (1983), Mawaali (1983), Akalmand (1984), Tohfa (1984), Balidaan (1985), Aulad (1987), Suhagan (1986), Ghar Sansar (1986), Dharm Adhikari (1986),Sone Pe Suhaaga (1988) were successful, Aag Aur Shola (1986), Himmat Aur Mehanat (1987) and Sarfarosh (1985) turned out to be duds.
It quickly became a renowned fact that only Sri could smartly work through her way in Hindi films virtually out-staging her other contemporaries from the South like Jaya Prada.
With Balu Mahendra’s Sadma in 1983, opposite Kamal Haasan, the entire Hindi film industry took notice of the latent actress lurking inside the inferno called Sridevi. Sadma, a remake of the Tamil hit Moondram Pirai won for Sridevi a lot of awards including an award for Best Actress. Soon she was deluged with meaty offers for films.
Sridevi worked with South sensation Nagarjuna in Aakhari Porattam, Govinda Govinda and Khudah Gawah and with Rajesh Khanna in Naya Kadam (1984), Maqsad (1984), Masterji (1985) and Nazrana (1987).
It is however, her titular performance in Nagina (1986) opposite Rishi Kapoor and Amrish Puri that immortalised her as the mesmerising magician on screen. Her performance in the climax song Main teri dushman… is undoubtedly most memorable.
Soon thereafter, as a goofy journalist in Mr India (1987), what Sridevi delivered onscreen was nothing less than a phenomenon. Her moves in Kaate nahi kat te… left everyone awestruck of the beauty gyrating in a blue sari while another hit song Hawa hawai sealed her fate as the reigning Queen of Bollywood thereby leaving her other contemporaries such as Jaya Prada and Meenakshi Sheshadri way behind in the box office rat race.
Just when everyone thought Sri had given her best, Chandni came along in 1989, followed by Chaalbaaz a few months later. With these two stupendous back to back super-hits, Sridevi’s stardom was not just untouchable, but also unmatchable. Sridevi earned her first Filmfare Award for Best Actress Female for Chaalbaaz.
In 1991 Yash Chopra cast Sridevi again in a lead role. This time for the double role in Lamhe. The movie bombed at the box-office but became somewhat a legend in the overseas market that helped the makers break even. It became a classic to reckon with, but everyone accepted that not to be loved by the masses was this cult movie’s fate. Sridevi’s portrayal of mother and daughter, highlighted how versatile an actress she is. The movie’s songs such as Morni baga ma and Kabhi mein kahoon showed Sri in two diametrically different versions and the audience knew it then that the reigning queen was none other than this empress on screen.
This was soon followed by another spectacular double role played by Sri in 1992’s Amitabh Bachchan starrer Khuda Gawah. As the Afghani warrior Benazir and her daughter Mehendi, Sri’s stellar performance earned her another Filmfare for the Best Actress nomination.
By then Sridevi’s reign in Bollywood was unprecedented. She bagged the lead actress role in Boney Kapoor’s Roop Ki Rani Choron Ka Raja which was the most expensive movie to be made at the time. Though it didn’t do good business, the constant stream of producers lining up to sign Sri as the lead actor didn’t stop. She starred as the main lead in Dharma Productions’ Gumraah opposite Sanjay Dutt and directed by Mahesh Bhatt, that earned her yet another Filmfare nomination.
In 1994, Sridevi’s performance as Sheetal Jaitley in Laadla opposite Anil Kapoor earned her another Filmfare Best Actress nomination. Her arrogant dialogue ‘Understand… You better understand’ became a well-used line.
While 1996 saw the last of Sridevi’s south release, that was Malayalam film Devaraagam opposite Aravind Swamy, in Bollywood the year 1997 marked the end of her first innings, with the release of Judaai that was produced by Boney Kapoor. After Judaai, the diva took a sabbatical from acting to start her family but not before giving a memorable performance as a money-minded, greedy housewife with Anil Kapoor and Urmila Matondkar in the lead that earned Sridevi her eighth Filmfare nomination.
Though professionally, Sridevi had reached the top slot in the industry; her personal life remained tragic.
Shree Amma Yengar Ayyappan was born on 13th August 1963 in Sivakasi, Madras State (present-day Tamil Nadu) to Ayyappan and Rajeshwari. It was common knowledge that Sri had a difficult childhood since she spent her younger years only on the sets with her mother. Although her years of hard work paid off and she became unparalleled in her craft, her decision to secretly marry superstar Mithun Chakraborty caused her a lot of mental trauma. Mithun married Sri without divorcing his second wife Yogeeta Bali ( Mithun’s first wife was Helena Luke from FTII) and hence, after being married for three years, in 1988 Mithun went back to Yogeeta after she attempted suicide by overdosing on sedatives.
In 1991, while Sridevi was working on Lamhe, she lost her father. In 1996, when Sri lost her mother to a mistaken brain surgery, she was nearly broke and had no one else to turn to, except Boney Kapoor who at that time had signed on Sri for Judaai. Since she had nowhere else to go, the much-married Boney Kapoor took her in. His first wife the late Mona Kapoor was apprehensive, but since Sridevi had tied rakhi to Boney to prove that she considered him a brother, she got to stay in.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Sridevi got pregnant with Boney’s child while under Mona’s roof and the actress asked Boney to cut off ties with his first family right away. After thirteen years of marital bliss, Mona was asked to leave that house along with her kids Arjun and Anshula.
Sridevi and Boney had a temple wedding, following which she gave birth to their first daughter Jahnvi in March 1997 and then Khushi in November 2000.
In Bollywood, Sridevi has had the distinction of having acted with almost every top actor, except perhaps Aamir Khan. From Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Raaj Kumar, Jeetendra and Rakesh Roshan to Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Sunny Deol and Vinod Khanna.
After Judaai’s release and the birth of her daughter, Sri decided to take a break from acting and focus on motherhood. In 2004, she made her television debut with Malini Iyer, followed by Kaboom in 2005 but went back to focussing on family within no time.
In 2015, Sridevi chose to stage her comeback with the film English Vinglish. When speaking about facing the cameras after 15 years, she had told me, “I did not turn down the offers to act in Darr from Yash Chopra and my husband Boneyji to act in his film Shakti because I did not like them, but because I did not like the idea of balancing motherhood and work and preferred to be a full-time mother to my daughters Janhvi and Khushi. English Vinglish is a film which will always remain extremely close to my heart because I faced the camera for the big screen after a gap of 15 years after Judaai.”
Sri continued,“I am telling this not just because I played the protagonist in the film, but because it touched my heart even as a woman who always has to fight to get her own identity in a male-dominated society today, and not every woman is lucky enough to get the backing of her husband like Gauri has Balki who stood by her through thick and thin to make the film. I have my husband Boney Kapoor who went out of his way to encourage me to stage my comeback as an actress after Judaai,” Sri had exulted when I met her for the promotions of English Vinglish.
Sri was delighted when her comeback film catapulted her. “English Vinglish clicked in a big way. Till date, whether in Tamil or Hindi, I did not receive this kind of fabulous response for any performance of mine, because of the media, now the explosion and exposure are bigger than earlier. The moment I read Gauri’s script, I loved it. I am glad that whether it is Karisma Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor or Madhuri Dixit, all of us are getting an opportunity once again to prove our mettle on the screen. The industry is now better organised unlike earlier and there are a better lot of technicians now. Frankly, I was not scared at all of facing the camera. On the contrary, I was quite excited and confident. At 13, when I had made my debut with Moondru Mudichu, there was no excitement at all, but I was more excited when I faced the camera for English Vinglish and even after the release of the film, the excitement continued in some form or the other. I have always been a director’s actress and I blindly surrender to my directors.”
Sri was always open for good meaty offers in South Indian films. “I cannot forget that if I am known as Sridevi internationally, it is only because of my body of work in Tamil and Telugu films which in turn fetched me films in Hindi like Solva Sawan and Himmatwala. I am also happy that the Tamil version of English Vinglish also did well. I am game to do films in both Tamil and Telugu, provided I get roles which suit me to the T, because you cannot expect me to run around trees like I did earlier.”
When asked whether she wanted to try her hand at direction like Gauri Shinde, Sri had quipped, “I am in the greatest phase of my life, personally as well as professionally. Why should I invite trouble by taking up the mantle of direction? The direction isn’t an easy job. I’d say that jisko joh karna hai woh use karna hai.” Sri feels that it is unfair to accuse the entertainment industry, that thanks to the cinema there is an increase in the atrocities on women. “Bad things have been happening from the days of Ramayan and Mahabharata and cinema has nothing to do with it. It only reflects what happens in the society today. Incidents of rape make me shudder. What is happening in our country needs to be condemned. We should raise awareness about making our country safer for women if we want our future generations to feel safe in our country.”When in her elements, Sri was known to be very witty and sarcastic. When asked her to take on the Himaatwala remake, very coolly and as a matter of fact, she had quipped, “All that I can say is that Himmatwala is not a Mughal- E Azam to be remade.”
After English Vinglish, in 2015 Sridevi starred in a Tamil movie Puli and more recently she toplined the rape-revenge drama Mom. The 54-year-old actress played an author-backed role as the woman who goes after her teenage daughter’s rapists. Sri proved all over again that she always was a genuine 24-carat star in films that often didn’t quite match her wattage.
According to Sridevi, Balu Mahendra’s Sadma, Shekhar Kapoor’s Mr India, Pankaj Parashar’s Chaalbaaz and Gauri’s English Vinglish were her best films in Hindi, while Mondram Pirai, Johnny, Moondru Mudichu, Meendum Kokila and Varumaiyin Niram Sigappu were her five favourite Tamil films.
Sri’s death is a lesson to several in the world of glamour because she allegedly used to take a lot of hydroxyl drugs in a bid to keep her weight down and kill hunger, heighten the body’s metabolic rate and make the heart beat faster.
There can be no replacement for Sridevi. Her loss is yet to sink in my mind because I still feel that she is yet to come from Dubai where she had gone to attend the wedding of her nephew Mohit Marwah. Ironically, Boney Kapoor’s first wife Mona Kapoor passed away even before their son Arjun Kapoor’s maiden film Ishaqzaade was released. It looks like history repeated itself and even before their daughter Janhvi Kapoor’s maiden venture Dhadak could see the light of the day, Boney has lost his second wife Sri too.
We at CINEBUSTER magazine offer our heartfelt condolences to Boney, Janhvi, Khushi and the Kapoor-Ayyappan families. The loss is irreplaceable.
Unknown Facts About Bollywood Queen SRIDEVI
While the nationwide fans of Sridevi will never recuperate from the shockwave of her untimely demise, all we can do is reminisce. Such was the legacy of India’s first female superstar that even though she was a diva for the nation with an open book for a life, there were still many unheard stories.
On this nostalgic trip,
Dipti Ranglani Gulabani takes you through some unknown facts of the past from the life of Sridevi – only for the love of the empress that was worshipped all over.
Farewell letters to SRIDEVI
A final goodbye to the superstar from the ones that loved and lost her…
I HATE GOD FOR KILLING SRIDEVI AND I HATE SRIDEVI FOR DYING
I have a habit of constantly dreaming and waking up every once in a while in the night to check out my cell phone and I suddenly saw a message that Sridevi is no more. I thought that either it’s a nightmare or a hoax and went back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up to check and there were around 50 messages informing me of the same
Back in the times when I was in Engineering college in Vijayawada, I happened to see her first Telugu film “Padaharellavayasu”.. I was awestruck with her beauty and I walked out of the theatre in a daze, thinking that she cannot be a real person and she has to be some fantasy form who somehow has taken a human shape. Then I saw her various other films, all of which constantly created a higher benchmark of both her talent and her beauty ..To me she looked like some being who has come from some other world in the outer space as a favour to bless us for a little while for all the good we might have done in this world .
She was like a creation of God which he does whenever he is in a very special mood as a very very special gift to mankind. My journey to Sridevi started when I was preparing for my debut film ‘Shiva’. I used to walk from Nagarjuna’s office in Chennai to a neighbouring street where Sridevi used to live and I used to just stand and watch Sridevi’s house from outside her gate.
I just couldn’t believe that the goddess of beauty lives in that stupid looking house. I say stupid because I believed that no man-made house deserved to house that beauty called SRIDEVI. I used to so desperately hope to catch a glimpse of her as she went in or out of her house. But sadly no such thing ever happened.
And then after ‘Shiva’ released and became a big hit,a producer came to me and asked if I was interested in doing a film with Sridevi. I said “Are you mad or what? I will die to just see her, let alone make a film with her!”He arranged a meeting with her and it took me a while to meet her at that very same house where I used to stand outside the gate and stare. At night we went and as luck would have it, there was a power cut in her house, so I was sitting in her living room in candlelight along with the producer waiting for the angel to appear.My heart was thumping like mad.
Her mother told us she was busy packing as she was about to catch a flight to go to Mumbai. As we were waiting, every once in a while Sridevi was rapidly crossing the living room as she was moving from one room to another in a rush to finish her packing even as she apologetically smiled at me for the delay. Everytime she was appearing and disappearing in a flash, the director in me started slow motioning her and running her backward and forward for my visual pleasure.
Finally she came and sat in the living room, just said a mandatory few lines that she would very much like to work with me and then she left for Mumbai. I continued talking to her mother with enormous respect and awe, because she actually gave birth to Sridevi. I went back to my place feeling like I was in the seventh heaven. The way Sridevi sat in front of me in the candlelight got imprinted in my mind like an exquisite painting and with her image completely filling both my mind and my heart I started writing KshanaKshanam.
I wrote KshanaKshanam with the one and only purpose so as to impress Sridevi. KshanaKshanam was intended by me as a love letter to her. Throughout the making of KshanaKshanam,I just couldn’t take my eyes off her charm, her beauty,her personality and her demeanour was a new discovery for me.
She had an invisible wall around her and she does not let anyone cross that. Behind that wall she maintains her dignity and her self-respect never letting anyone inside. Also during the course of working with her and observing her technique of acting, I began to understand more and more as a director about the nuances of her performances and characterizations, because for me she formed the epitome of cinematic acting.
Her popularity and stardom had to be seen to be believed. We were shooting for the climax in Nandyal for KshanaKshanam and the whole town of Nandyal came to a standstill when they came to know that Sridevi was in town. Banks, govt offices, schools, colleges, everything in town closed as everyone wanted to see Sridevi.
She stayed in a traveller’s bungalow in Nandyal and at a little distance, I was staying in another bungalow. There used to be a crowd of atleast 20,000 people around her bungalow throughout the night just staring at it. There were about 50 tough guys along with a 100 strong police force who used to continuously guard her.
When we were at location, we used to know that Sridevi started from her bungalow to come to location because we used to see a column of dust travelling towards us from the distance. The dust was due to the thousands of people running behind her car. I have never seen more of a super star and now she just got extinguished.
Sridevi is the most beautiful and the most sensuous woman God ever created and I think he creates such exquisite pieces of art like her only once in a thousand years. Though she is no longer there, we her directors fortunately have her captured as a goddess of beauty in our cameras and our cinematic angel has now just become a divine angel.
I thank God for creating Sridevi and I thank Louis Lumiere for creating the movie camera for giving us an opportunity to contain her forever. I still can’t believe that she is no more and I am lying in bed writing about my memories of her.
I so hope I am still having a bad dream,but I know I am not.
I hate Sridevi.
I hate her for making me realise that she too is finally only just a human being.
I hate that her heart too has to beat to live.
I hate that she too has a heart which can just stop like anybody else’s.
I hate that I lived to see the messages informing me of her death.
I hate God for killing her.
And I hate Sridevi for dying.
I love you Sri wherever you are… and I will always love you.
– Ram Gopal Varma
My Love Letter To Sridevi’s Fans
I debated with myself whether I should put this out because of some names mentioned, but I strongly felt SRIDEVI belongs to her fans more than anyone else and they deserve to know the truth.
MY LOVE LETTER TO SRIDEVI’S FANS
YES like millions of you, I too believed that she was the most beautiful and desirable woman ever and we all know that she was the biggest superstar of the country and ruled the silver screen as the main heroine for more than 20 years.
But that’s just a part of the story. However shocked and sad I feel about Sridevi’s death, it’s finally once again a rude reminder about how unpredictable, cruel, fragile and mysterious that both life and death are.
After her death, more than you all, there is definitely much more for me to say than what most people are saying now, about how beautiful she was, what a great actress she was, how her death affected them, “ RIP”s etc, etc.
That’s because I had an opportunity to be close to her in the course of my two films Kshanakshanam and Govinda Govinda. Sridevi’s life is a classic case of how a celebrity person’s actual life is completely different from how the rest of the outside world perceives it.
For many, Sridevi’s life was perfect. Beautiful face, great talent, a seemingly stable family with two beautiful daughters. From outside, everything looked so enviable and desirable… But was Sridevi a very happy person and did she lead a very happy life?
I know her life from the time I met her. I saw with my own eyes, how her life was like a bird in the sky till her father’s death and then became like a bird in a cage due to her overprotective mother.
In those days actors used to be only paid in mostly black money and due to fear of tax raids, her father used to trust friends and relatives and every one of them betrayed her the moment her father died. Coupled with this, the ignorant mother made many wrong investments in litigated properties and all those mistakes combined made her almost penny less by the time Boney came into her life.
He himself was in huge debts and all he could afford was to give her a shoulder to cry on.
Her mother became a mental patient because of a wrong surgery on her brain in the US, and somewhere along the way her younger sister Srilatha eloped and got married to their neighbour’s son. The mother, before dying, put all properties in Sridevis name, but her sister put a case on Sridevi claiming that her mother was insane and not in her senses when she signed the will.
So in effect, the woman desired by millions in the world was all alone and almost penny less in the world except for one, Boney.
Boney ‘s mother portrayed her as a home breaker and publically punched her in the stomach in a five-star hotel lobby for what she did to Boney’s first wife Mona.
In this entire period except for the short glimmer of ‘English Vinglish’, Sridevi has been pretty much an extremely unhappy woman. The uncertainty of the future, the ugly turns and twists in her private life left deep scars in the superstar’s sensitive mind and thereafter she was never at peace.
She went through so much in her life and due to her early career entry as a child artiste, life never gave her time to grow up at a normal pace. More than the external peace, her internal mental state was of a high degree of concern and this forced her to look at her own self.
She was the most beautiful woman for so many people. But did she think she was beautiful? Yes, she did, but every actresses’ nightmare is age, and she was no exception. For years she was doing occasional cosmetic surgeries, the effects of which can be clearly seen.
She always came across as a little uptight, but that’s because she built a psychological wall around her, as she was scared of anybody to really see what’s going on within her. She was panicky about anybody knowing what her insecurities were.
Not because of her fault, but because she was thrust with fame from a very young age, it never gave her a chance to be independent and be what she could really be and what she really wanted to be.
She had to put on the makeup and be somebody else, not just in front of the camera, but also to put a psychological makeup to hide her real self behind the camera.
She was being constantly directed by the motives of her parents, her relatives, her husband and to an extent even her own children. She was scared whether her daughters would be accepted or not like most star parents do.
Sridevi is actually a child trapped in a woman’s body ..she is naive as a person, but suspicious because of her bitter experiences which is not a very good combination. Keeping the speculations on her death aside, I generally don’t say “Rest In Peace” after people die, but in her case, I want to really say this because I very strongly believe that she would finally and truly rest in peace now for the first time in her life because she died.
From my personal experience with her, the only time I ever saw her in peace was in front of the camera that too only between Action and Cut ..that’s because she could cut off the harsh reality and escape into her own fantasy world.
That’s why now I am sure she will be at peace forever because she’s finally far far away from what gave her and was giving her so much pain.
RIP Sridevi, but I assure you, that the world won’t rest in peace for doing this to you.
We the fans and your near ones, have given you only suffering by making you slog in every which way ever since you were a child, but you gave us only joy and happiness. Yes, it’s not a fair deal, but it’s too late to do anything now.
I now have visions of you flying like a free bird across heavenly landscapes with true peace and happiness in your eyes.
I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I truly want to believe in it now, because we fans in our next birth deserve to experience you once again and this time we will try our best to make amendments and make ourselves worthy enough to deserve you.
Please give us that one chance Sridevi, because we all truly love you.
I can go on writing like this, but I can’t stop my tears anymore… RGV
