RIP Sridevi: Actress has one thing common with evergreen beauties like Madhubala

Sridevi has left us at only 54. She was at her prime, both as a woman and an actor. Her performance in Mom last year proved her steely will to excel, no matter the age.

Sridevi was determined to take forward her diva image into the coming years. In an earlier interview, she had even strongly protested against the word ‘fifty’. “Don’t even talk about it. I don’t think of my age. Neither should you,” she had admonished.

But someone was counting her years. Bollywood screen divas have a nasty habit of leaving us prematurely. Nutan, whom cancer claimed, was only 55 when she left us. Coincidentally, she too died in February like Sridevi. Nutan’s legacy was far greater than Sridevi or any of the other screen legends.

Sadly, most of Sridevi’s Hindi films did not match up to her volcanic talent. Judaai and Chandni were at best, mediocre films, although they are much remembered.

Throughout the 1980s, she excelled in the most atrocious potboilers from the South directed by the likes of K. Raghavendra Rao.

When asked how she managed to be so brilliant even in such awful films, she replied with a giggle, “I never discriminate among my roles. To me, every film is equally precious and I give the same respect to all my directors.”

Meena Kumari passed away at the age of 39, just a week before the release of Pakeezah. However, her legendary reputation depends on just a few classics, with most of her work being unquestionably mediocre. Madhubala left us when she was 36. Her celluloid legacy boasts of sporadic brilliance in films like Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Tarana and the underrated Amar, but it is her swan song Mughal-e-Azam that can still make us swoon.

Similarly, Geeta Bali, who shared the impish charm, comic spontaneity and sheer joie de vivre of Sridevi, went suddenly at 35 after an attack of small-pox. Sadly, none of her films have any recall value, not even Albela, which is best remembered for the song Shola jo bhadke.

Luckily, Sridevi is a screen great whose performances in Mr India, Chaalbaaz, Sadma, Judaai, Chandni , Lamhe and English Vinglish will keep us regaled till kingdom come. The closest we came to a fitting farewell for Sridevi is English Vinglish, a deeply relevant and engaging discourse on the importance that the Indian middle class attaches to speaking the English language fluently.