A radio channel in Mumbai asked us our thoughts about Sridevi on this, what would have been, her 55th birthday. After some mulling, here's my full quote to them:
Today we - the Sridevi fan collective - feel the same way we did when we first heard of Sridevi’s passing... Empty. Hollow. Numb with grief, shock and disbelief. Like the shape of Sridevi has been carved out of our hearts and nothing but the emptiness remains....
Its been five months since the news hit headlines globally, and Sridevi fans have reacted in two ways; sadness and anger - both in extreme levels. They can’t believe it happened and they want to blame someone for it - we’ve seen so many messages of people expressing their rage at the injustice of it all and want to assign blame. The murder myth will live on forever.
Like....say the untimely passing of Marilyn Monroe in 1962 at the age of 36... it added to her legend, it added an aura of mystery to her global celebrity. Sridevi’s passing will add to her mythology, her legend. There will be endless speculation, even fifty five years from now there will be conspiracy theories on what happened to ‘the’ Sridevi.
Undoubtedly, she will be known as one of the greats - if not the greatest (but then we are obviously partial...) Indian actress of all-time....
The way she died still seems so bizarre and prosaic… When she was so larger-than-life, how could life escape her?
To me, Sridevi’s passing still hasn’t registered… it’s like the media is talking about someone else, not the Sridevi I’ve loved since Lamhe…
You know her passing spiked the ratings on our Sridevi blog by 4 million. But again, only a vacuous din reverberated. It didn’t mean anything per se…
Ages ago, around the year 2005, Shobhaa De asked me to write Sridevi’s biography and my only request was that I wanted the consent of Sridevi herself. Sri declined. I respected her wishes and didn’t even start the book. The funniest thing was, Sridevi told De, "Why? My life is so boring. I’m just an ordinary housewife.”
She was anything but ordinary.
RIP Sridevi
RIP my Queen.
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