Her Death

Being an entertainment writer, and writing about and taking a look at the time of times of any celebrity that passes, comes with the territory. However, Sridevi’s death had a profound impact on me, and it took a while to figure out why.

Sridevi was the first actress in any country or industry that I personally grew up watching, admiring, crushing on and being entertained by… whose loss I’ve experienced like this. Without realizing what she meant to me, the days following her death brought slow ripples of sadness, despair, gut punches and an inexplicable sorrow.

When deciding to commemorate her passing with one of her films, English Vinglish, I found it to be a brutally bittersweet experience; smiling ear to ear as she charmed me with her on screen presence, while watching the screen in blur, as the tears flowed, knowing that she is forever frozen in these movies, and it’s the only way we’ll ever see her again.

Sridevi was not an actress that I look back on and can identify as one who impacted me in this way. It’s completely confounding that I would feel this way, and to others, may seem ridiculous; being emotional over a personality only seen on the screen, or read about in print. But it’s an intimate experience to see someone on screen year after year, bring them into your home and experience, clearly through fiction, their sadness and happiness and relate your own personal experience to that of the make believe people that they portray on screen.

Those are the sense memories that have impact. Deep emotional impact. And in my case, it’s those memories that came flooding back, as I revisited the career of Sridevi, and realized, all too late, how much she truly meant to me.

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