When people say they adore Sridevi, they mean her public persona — outrageous costumes, energetic dance numbers, and comic perfection. And a huge part of it was reinforced by the roles Hindi filmmakers wrote for her. But the actor’s private self was worlds apart.
“There were many Sridevis within the person smiling and chatting lightly in a crowded room,” author and columnist Shobhaa De told ThePrint. “She was intensely private, reticent, and socially awkward. The screen persona was completely different—entertaining, goofy, magnetic. An extrovert all the way. The two rarely merged.”
It is perhaps in this chasm between her on-screen magnetism and off-screen reticence that Sridevi’s stardom was forged. Everyone loves a good mystery. And Sridevi was loved like few other stars have been since.
“Sridevi was the most adored female star in the pantheon. Versatile and charismatic, she was loved for her incandescent screen presence,” De said.
Jovial but fiery
In all her interviews, Sridevi stuck to politically correct answers. Her favourite heroines, she would say, were Nootan and Madhubala. If she were asked about her favourite Khan, she’d smile and list what she likes about each one.
The walls stayed up. But choreographer Saroj Khan, who worked with the actor on some of her best dance numbers, often shared anecdotes that offered a glimpse into the other side.
Khan told ABP News that Sridevi once invited her to a New Year’s party at the actor’s Chennai home, along with six boys from Khan’s dance group. At the party, Sridevi wanted to play dandiya with the boys, but not knowing it well, she ended up hitting some of their fingers instead of the sticks. To prank her, the boys wrapped their hands in bandages the next day, saying she had badly hurt them. She was moved to tears, Khan said.
But when Sridevi learned that it was merely a joke, she wiped her eyes and invited the guests to dinner. “When I opened the lid, inside the bowl was dirt. The second one was full of stones, the third had paper… And she says, ‘Eat’,” Khan recalled, revealing that the shy, reserved Sridevi had a jovial side.
But the actor was also known for having a short temper, which mostly flared up when she felt she was wronged by those she loved. She once had a rift with director Pankaj Parashar for naming Tabu as his favourite actress and not her. In two weeks, however, all was back to normal. The actor’s standoff with Saroj Khan is also well-known. According to Khan, Sridevi was upset with her because she felt Khan had begun favouring Madhuri Dixit and was giving her better steps and moves. These incidents reveal the insecurities Sridevi battled even at the peak of her career.
It doesn’t take a guruji to know that Sridevi was no dance prodigy. But the actor worked twice as hard to overcome her natural limitations, rehearsing for hours before a shoot. She practised the moves for the iconic ‘Hawa Hawaii‘ from Mr India (1987) in the corridors of legendary Mehboob Studio and outside the makeup room, as the crew couldn’t find a hall for rehearsals.
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Larger than life
There are many facets to Sridevi’s on-screen persona. She wasn’t a tragedy queen or a dream girl. In the same breath, she could pay a delightful homage to Charlie Chaplin and serve endless glamour in a simple saree. Her secret was simple: she was just that good an actor.
“She had a bag of tricks that she collected from various masters, and she knew how to make permutations and combinations of them, so that even those who taught her would not know it came from them,” Kamal Haasan told journalist Padmaja Joshi at the India Today Conclave in 2018.
Sridevi approached Nagina (1986), where she played a shape-shifting snake with the same sincerity she had for Sadma (1983), in which she played the role of a traumatised prostitute. That is perhaps why no snake film before or after has come close to the power of Sridevi with glossy lipstick and blue contact lenses.
The actor revealed in an interview with Aaj Tak that she had only one day to shoot the climactic song for Nagina, ‘Main Teri Dushman, Dushman Tu Mera‘. She recalled that the shoot took place early in the morning, and as she was performing, the set was being destroyed around her.
By the time the day ended, only one wall was left, and the director asked Saroj Khan and Sridevi to set the final moves against it. Luckily for the team, Sridevi never needed fancy sets or costumes to captivate her viewers — a fact Khan knew only too well.
“Sridevi would fill up the screen with her personality. She was larger than life,” she said.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)