In the 1980s, barring Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi could hold on her own against any of the big male stars in the industry. But what she couldn’t do was survive the bias of the Hindi film audience against ageing female actresses. They just didn’t accept them as the main lead of a movie then and after a certain age not even as a main actress.  
She slowly retired from acting and went on to marry Boney Kapoor. Then she had two daughters and it was a full time job just being a mom. Now that they are grown up, she has again started appearing in movies. 
The 2012 release English Vinglish was a surprisingly successful comeback. And now she will be seen once again in a movie called Mom, which will release early next month. It is being produced by her husband and also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Akshaye Khanna. Since her role is as a mother and the movie has a relationship with daughter at the centre of it, Sridevi is often being asked in interviews about her own equation with her children. And she has some interesting answers to give. 
Turns out that both her daughters are not particularly familiar with her work. The elder, Jhanvi, had only recently started watching Sridevi’s movies while the younger one had only seen Mr India. But one statement of Sridevi went on to cause a minor controversy. Jhanvi has decided that she would also get into the movie business as an actress. She is being launched by Karan Johar in Student of the Year 2. In an interview to a tabloid, Sridevi was asked what she felt about her daughter following her footsteps. Her reply was that she hadn’t been in favour of the decision in the beginning. And that she would have been happier if Jhanvi had married and settled down instead of getting into Bollywood. But that since her daughter had made up her mind, she wanted to see her happy. 
The idea that a girl is better off married was thought of as regressive by some and it invited acerbic comments on social media. Sridevi then tried to make amends by putting up a Tweet saying she had been misunderstood. She wrote, ‘What I meant to say initially was that I would prefer if my daughters didn’t lead the kind of hectic life that comes with this business and instead have a relatively stable and relax life. But they are ambitious and I have come to respect that like every parent should, and that respect overshadows my protective parental instincts now.’


Delete word


Shah Rukh Khan’s next film is almost upon us. And after the debacle of Raees, a gangster flick, he is moving back to safer territory with a true blue romantic role, the kind that made Shah Rukh a superstar in the new millennium. 
The movie’s name is When Harry Met Sejal and this one has a fairly decent director in Imtiaz Ali, who also is familiar with the romance genre. And he has a good hit rate with movies that also get good words from the critics.  
Given Shah Rukh’s recent disconnect from his fans, hopefully this might turn the switch on again. Movies with superstars in them rarely have a run in with the Censor Board, but this one has belied the trend, albeit in a small way. 
The recently released trailer apparently has a scene in which the word ‘intercourse’ is said and the Censor Board wants it to be snipped out. It might be a strange demand but then the Board has always been whimsical in the things it expects from movies. Whether the movie’s makers will decide to humour the Board is now the question? It depends on how important they think it is to the movie. If they really want it, then Shah Rukh still has the ability to pull a few strings!    


Memory tales


Tubelight, starring Salman Khan, has just released timed to the Eid holiday and predictably the movie is doing great. Many of the critics have panned his performance but that does not bother him in any case. 
With the continuing of his golden run, Salman should be patting himself on the back, except that he is not that sort of a person. But everytime a movie of his comes out, the world gets some insight into his personality because this is when he courts the media. In one interview to a newspaper, he opened up on his style of work. He professed admiration for Akshay Kumar who could work in three or four movies every year as against the Khans who do one or two movies. But, he said, he planned to increase his movie count to three from 2018. 
He also spoke of how difficult it was for him to remember long complicated dialogues and gave the examples of Govinda and Sanjay Dutt who could cram in reams of pages and speak it when the scene demanded. The moral of the story must then be that the actor with the most memory does not necessarily go on to be the biggest superstar! 


No coupling


Turns out the movie that Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Kapoor was supposed to do together might not happen after all. It was in fact Abhishek who had recently confirmed that Gulab Jamun, which will be produced by Anurag Kashyap, was under way. But now it seems that Aishwarya is not keen on it. She has reportedly asked for changes in the script before agreeing to give her go-ahead. 
It must be remembered that she has plenty of other movies in the pipeline. There is one opposite Anil Kapoor and another with Mani Ratnam, the acclaimed director who has often featured her. Abhishek, on the other hand, is not so fortunate and has just one movie in hand. How did he get that? He is the producer of the movie and so effectively hired himself. But to be fair to him, he could get movies in which he is a side character to the main hero. Like Happy New Year, in which he was a foil for Shah Rukh Khan. But he probably wants to return to becoming solo hero and that will take some trying.   


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