‘A gifted artiste, she refused to be typecast’
may be three shots; she would remove her makeup, and do it again. I never understood the reason, but I think she always wanted to give her best, let her work speak and also, look gorgeous.
And it was not a mere touch-up, but removing makeup from her nose and cheeks and then applying it again. Also, she didn’t have any makeup man back then. She put in great efforts to look good and perform well.
She didn’t have any hang-ups or nakhras over which profile of hers looked good on camera. She was very cool about the fact that she is what she is, take it or leave it.
During Chandni, she often improvised her scenes and lines. The complete ‘Cogniac sharaab nahi hoti’ sequence was improvised by Sridevi, Yashi ji and me; it was never a part of the script. In another sequence, I had to buy ice-cream for both of us. In the shot, she was to ask me for a bite and I was to give it to her. But when I asked her back, she showed me her thumb (a gesture to tease). This, too, was improvised. As a co-star, she really helped because acting is all about reaction and she was a great reactor.
And what a dancer! During a song in Switzerland, Saroj Khan had choreographed a dance sequence for her with Indian classical, and some western steps. They all left for the location at 11am and while Yash Chopra thought it will take the whole day, they were back by 2pm. Sridevi was so terrific at dancing that she finished it in just two hours. Sarojji later told me that Sridevi is so good and even her rehearsals were so perfect that you could take that as the final shot. Such was her professionalism.
I have lovely memories of her as an actor and a person. When she was carrying her first child, Boney Kapoor had come to meet her on the set of our film Kaun Sachha Kaun Jootha (1997). It was so cute of her to say, “This is the last film and my last few days of shooting.” That was the last time I worked with her, and it remains my parting shot with her. She was bidding adieu to the film industry to start a new life, get married, build a home and raise her children.
I missed her for the last 20 years because we didn’t get to work together after that film. We only met socially. I see her films today and I know how she focused on the nuances, and tried to look different each time. She believed in breaking the typecast. She was a very gifted artiste and I don’t think there has ever been a female actor in Bollywood who attained such glory and marvellous heights.
Also, Mr Amitabh Bachchan very graciously told me that to mark respect to Sridevi and show solidarity, love and affection to her, we should cancel our shoot, as we were supposed to do a promo song for 102 Not Out, and I agreed with him. Both of us have worked with her in several films and we have danced and sang together, so it would have not looked nice to do that on the day when she has passed away. We will miss her.
If you were a product of the late 80s and early 90s, admiration of Sridevi was not a matter of conscious choice, it was more a cultural habit. The wide-eyed days of our childhood were populated with the image of her face. We saw posters with her alluring gaze smiling at us each time we looked right or left at the back panels of auto rickshaws, her magnetic presence and fiery dancing captivated us as we tuned into Chitrahaar on Doordarshan.
The devastating news of Sridevi ji’s sudden demise arrived like all terrible news comes — simply. A Whatsapp message at 2:34am — “Sridevi is no more” — I desperately hoped that it was a hoax, a sick joke, or some terrible misunderstanding. I never considered myself a Sridevi fan. I never thought I would be so shocked and saddened by her passing. I’d met her only once at a Diwali party just last year. I was struck that this first female superstar of Indian cinema was sitting quietly in a corner of a glittering filmy party. I went up and introduced myself and said I had grown up watching her films and it was an honour to meet her in person. It turned out that the bigger honour was that she had seen one of my films and appreciated my work. I sprouted wings and floated out of that party smiling.
I have worked with a lot of people who had worked with Sridevi ji in various capacities. Never once have I heard anything but the highest praise for her professionalism, hard work, talent and artistic integrity. As an artiste who faced the film camera first when she was four years old, Sridevi had a five-decade-long love affair with the camera. Everyone spoke about how the normally shy and reserved Sridevi was a changed person as soon as the camera began rolling.
Sometimes the true stature of a public personality is revealed once we lose them. As I watch fans, colleagues, members of the film fraternity, even bickering politicians, unite in mourning and grieving the loss of one of India’s tallest film personalities, it strikes me as telling that there is such a national outpouring of grief and love for an actor who had only just returned to the silver screen from a 15-year hiatus. To me, Sridevi’s greatness did not lie in her beauty, or her dancing skills, or even in her great performances. It lay in the fact that Sridevi rose to become India’s first female superstar in overwhelmingly male, and male-dominated industries and work spaces.
Her greatness lay in the fact that she was able to shine with the sheer mettle of her performance in films that were so clearly written for male stars. Her greatness lay in the fact that in 1989; at a time when (generally speaking) the hero-dominated-action-formula film — which relegated heroines to five dance numbers and some romantic scenes and helpless screaming in the climax was the staple product of ‘Bollywood’ — Sridevi carried almost totally on her shoulders a commercial entertainer, Chalbaaz, all the way to smashing box-office success.
Sridevi’s searing talent almost forced commercial directors and producers to write meatier and more meaningful or performance-oriented roles for the heroine. Sridevi seemingly snatched superstardom from a society that had until then not conceived consciously that there could be a female superstar. Goodbye Sridevi ji, we were never able to honour and laud your greatness and calibre enough because we never expected you to be gone so soon. But you will live in our hearts, like you have these past five decades.