BOLLYWOOD icon Sridevi mourned by thousands
Actress helped redefine roles in Indian movies
MUMBAI, India — Lining up for hours, thousands of mourning fans paid their respects Wednesday to Sridevi, the iconic Bollywood actress who drowned accidentally in a Dubai hotel bathtub over the weekend.
Sridevi’s body was flown home late Tuesday night in a plane owned by Anil Ambani, a Mumbai entertainment baron.
By early Wednesday morning, people had begun lining up along a security fence outside the private club near Sridevi’s home where the body had been laid out.
One mourner, a man who gave his name only as Prashant, arrived at about 7 a.m., hours before anyone was to be allowed in.
“No matter how long I have to wait, I will wait,” he said. “I’ll wait until I’m able to pay my respects.” “I saw all her movies,” he said. Inside the club, the actress’s body was placed on a raised platform.
Her extended family, including her husband, producer Boney Kapoor, and her two daughters, stood by the platform as fans and colleagues walked past in respect.
By late afternoon, her body, wrapped in an Indian flag, began its journey to the crematorium where her funeral took place according to Hindu customs. The body was carried in a truck decorated with flowers and a giant poster of the actress.
Sridevi, 54, was in Dubai for a wedding when she drowned in a hotel bathtub Saturday after losing consciousness. Investigators in Dubai, who said alcohol was found in her system, closed their case Tuesday and handed the body to her family.
Sridevi, who used only one name onscreen, began her film career as a child and went on to star in regional films in southern India before making her Bollywood debut in the late 1970s.
By the late 1980s, she was able to command top billing and dominate screen space in a film industry in which the heroine’s role was largely relegated to a few songs and a handful of romantic scenes as the leading man’s love interest.
Despite a life spent entirely in the movie business, colleagues described Sridevi as quiet and shy on the sets until she faced the camera, when several of them recalled how she would “transform” into the character she was playing.
In 1997, she married Kapoor, a producer on many of her films, and stepped away from cinema for many years while she raised her two daughters.
Sridevi returned to films in 2012 with “English Vinglish,” where she played a quiet housewife who remains largely in the background until she decides to learn English to fit in with her family.