India’s maiden silver screen diva

Rajini (Night) and Kamal (Lotus)…see what I did there?

I have mentioned earlier how Sridevi, Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth were ‘growing up’ together. Kamal Haasan was already a superstar owing to his Malayalam (and later Tamil) films, but Rajinikanth hadn’t become the ‘Thalaivar’ yet.

Sridevi did 18 films with Rajinikanth and 27 films with Kamal Haasan. With Kamal, she formed a popular onscreen romantic pair. They were a thing and people loved to see them together. But it all truly started with Malayalam movies. Between 1976 and 1977, they had featured in as many as five Malayalam films together: Kuttavum Shikshayum (1976), Aadhya Paadam, Aasheervaadam, Sathyavan Savithri and Nirakudam (all 1977). This kind of sudden spurt of prolificacy by this pair in Malayalam cinema is baffling. Many of these films, notably Nirakudam, were box-office hits. Nirakudam was remade from the Tamil classic Bhaaga Pirivinai (1959), which was also remade in Hindi as Khandan starring Sunil Dutt and Nutan. Sridevi reprised Nutan’s role in the Malayalam film. Another piece that many talk about is a spectacular dance recital by Sridevi in Sathyavan Savithri. Even ‘spectacular’ as a word falls criminally short of describing what this ‘untrained dancer’ did there.

The first truly notable film of the Kamal–Sridevi pair was one in which they were not even romantically paired. Manitharil Ithanai Nirangala (1978) was one of those rare Indian films where a man and woman were principal characters in a movie but were not a romantic couple. The film opens with Shantha (Sridevi) trying to find a job in Madras. A man lures her into an ‘interview’ and forces himself on her. She is then at a police station, crying her heart out, but she’s clubbed with a group of women arrested that day for sex work. They mistake her for a sex worker. One of the women takes a liking to her and gives her a place to stay. They become like sisters. But Shantha sees her benefactor being dragged out like a doormat by men. To help her and support her, Shantha tries to venture into sex work herself but a righteous old gentleman reprimands her. When the woman she lived with eventually dies, Shantha is on her own again. She returns to her village and starts living with her friend Devaki (Sathyapriya). Devaki’s husband, Velu (Kamal Haasan), is a bit of an obnoxious prude but his heart is in the right place. Shantha’s past returns to haunt her in the form of the cop who had arrested her before. The village station master (Murali Mohan) falls in love with Shantha. While she ponders whether to reciprocate, the station master’s father turns out to be the same old man who once dissuaded her from sex work.

In Tamil cinema till then she wasn’t quite the swinging star that she was in Telugu, but through this movie she was able to spread her wings. How much of these complex roles she could actually ‘understand’ at this stage is debatable but her performances were flawless. It is that indescribable superpower she had that books like this one and many others before this, have attempted to fathom.

The next Kamal–Sridevi outing was just as mainstream as Manitharil Ithanai Nirangala. Partly inspired from the 1945 Hollywood musical Wonder Man, Kalyanaraman (1979) is about a dead man returning from the grave to avenge his own death with the help of his identical twin. It was later remade in Bollywood as Ghazab (1982), with Dharmendra and Rekha playing the lead roles. Kamal Haasan got the author-backed role and Sridevi didn’t have much to do, though by now she had acquired the art of making good use of her screen time even in unremarkable roles. This was something that held her in good stead throughout her Bollywood years. Having witnessed the murder of Kamal Haasan’s character, her character loses her mental balance. There are scenes that bring to mind her histrionics in Sadma/Moondram Pirai, which was still three years away then.

Neela Malargal (1979) was the second remake of Anuraag that Sridevi starred in, after her adult debut Anuragalu, only this time it was in Tamil instead of Telugu. There were many embellishments in the story which made it different from the original film. Additionally, Thayillamal Nannilai has gone down in history as the only film that had a peacock uniting the hero and heroine (Kamal and Sridevi). The film also brought the trio (of Kamal, Sridevi and Rajinikanth) together again, if only for a few minutes since Rajinikanth was playing a cameo. Sridevi and Kamal were on a roll, as they became a bankable romantic pair on-screen. Many of these films were successful, with films like Guru (1980) which were major blockbusters. And it was not just any two actors. Both of these people were powerful performers, and they were in their prime. When they shared a frame, it was like talent and charisma oozing out of the screen.

I.V. Sasi, who had done as many as nine Malayalam films with Sridevi, directed her in Guru. The film was almost a frame-to-frame remake of Pramod Chakraborty’s 1973 Hindi superhit Jugnu, with Kamal and Sridevi reprising Dharmendra and Hema Malini’s roles respectively. The films were so similar that even the dialogues and the shots were near-identical. Except Dharmendra’s hat was replaced by Kamal’s terrible toupee. It was one of Sridevi and Kamal Haasan’s biggest hits.

K. Balachander, Kamal’s revered KB Sir, was Sridevi and Rajinikanth’s mentor too. When he asked Kamal to mentor the young girl, there was no question of him not doing it. Kamal was almost like an elder sibling, teaching her things since the parent had instructed him to do so. The two struck a chord, and the chemistry was evident on-screen. They later come back together for their mentor in Varumayin Niram Sivappu (1980), which loosely translates to ‘the colour of poverty is red’.

As the title would imply, the film has somewhat leftist leanings. A band of unemployed Tamil boys, led by Rangan (Kamal Haasan) live in a cheap tenement in Delhi and try to navigate the time between unemployment and life beginning. He meets Devi (Sridevi), another youngster just like them who is trying to eke out a living by acting in theatre. The heart of the film lies in the cynicism of the unemployed youth of the 1970s, but is dealt with caustic humour. Much like an adolescent sitting in the toilet with forbidden magazines, one of the boys sits around in the pot with a newspaper open on his lap—dreaming of himself sitting in an office doing mundane office work. When Devi insists that they finish their lunch, the perpetually hungry boys put up a show with empty pans to make her believe they are having the meal of their lives. Kamal as the disillusioned youth spouts lines written by the legendary Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi.

Sridevi plays a simple middle-class woman, a far cry from the glamour queens she was destined to play out repeatedly in the Hindi film industry.

‘Excerpted with permission from Amborish Roychoudhury’s ‘ Sridevi’; published by Rupa Publications)