Sir — This refers to the report, “Sadma strikes India: Sridevi leaves at just 54” (February 26). She came, she saw, she conquered and she left us. The news of Sridevi’s demise after a cardiac arrest in Dubai could not have come at a worse time. At 54, she was only beginning to reach her full stride as an actor. Her last two films, the recent thriller Mom, in which she played an avenging mother out to get her daughter’s rapists and English Vinglish, that saw her as a docile housewife who develops a passion to learn English, reinforces her versatility and range. long after many of her peers had hung up their boots, Sridevi made a starry comeback with English Vinglish in 2012. Sridevi was Bollywood’s first female superstar, a marquee name, who could open films on her own.
With her daughter Jahnvi debuting in a Karan Johar film, she would have become a star-mom too — if she had lived to see it. But for our generation of movie-lovers, Sridevi was, and will always be, pure electricity, bonafide ‘bijli’, who, at her best, lit up the screen.