The context became unbearably prosaic: a 2005 press conference hosted by a soap manufacturer featuring leading ladies who had endorsed the beauty soap over the years. The actresses had been disingenuously hidden behind lifestyles reduce-outs of themselves. Everyone took turns rising to applause, but in Sridevi’s case, the gulf between cardboard and conqueror turned into too excellent, and to look at her – so often immortalized on posters and magazine covers – all at once inside the flesh, taking walks in our path, smiling and posing for the cameras, changed into too overwhelming. It felt surreal, like facing a magic trick while no longer looking forward to one. Also, she shone. I consider being spellbound using this luminous heroine who became, at once and inevitably, the megastar of the room. I ought to have gaped.
We all have. Sridevi turned into the spotlight, and all the people who attracted the light with such urgency certainly overshadowed the ones around her. She never seemed to be reaching out for it. Privately, in communication or interviews, the actress became stunningly quiet, simpering with politeness, speaking softly and rarely, entirely unrecognizable from her vivacious on-display screen personality. It was as though we, who talked to her, were introduced to her and tried no longer to forget about our names in her presence, were getting to fulfill one twin in a two-sister film, just like the many she did. The different twins belonged simplest to the camer
Looking back at Sridevi’s paintings, her enthusiasm is astounding. Her face is a wondrous element, fearless and gloriously free – all winks and pouts and tics and scrunched up noses – and they do electrifying things with it, whether to enhance a lyric she’s mouthing, or to make us giggle, or to make us sigh. Her giant eyes are forever wobbly, continually on the verge of a nervous breakdown or a great giggle. Her body is composed of contradictions, dainty wrists, and sleek arms preserving step with powerful thighs; a fantastic dancer frequently pushes herself into clumsiness. Her infamous voice is simultaneously painful and sad, shrill enough to get under our skins but also to name us from another frequency. Her persona, too, is a tightrope act, poised among dual extremes of the naif and the dominatrix, a female who is aware of what she wants and one unafraid to invite if she does not.
True to those movies, approximately snakes, Sridevi turned into a shapeshifter. She gave it her all in every function, casting apart arrogance with that nonchalance most effective goddesses have. She blazed a path as a performer, performing in cinema throughout the country, going from South to North and taking no prisoners as she continually broke the new floor. She towered over the guys in her movies, stealing a march due to her display screen presence and what she would do in the songs. Some of these songs frequently deserved better films around them, but what songs those have been: wherein Sridevi should momentarily make up for the film and its mediocrity with a twinkle and a shimmy, even if dancing atop a tabla the scale of a townhouse.
