Mx India is dead, but her spirit lives

“Ghane mulaayam kaale baal, khile khile matwale baal” the hair oil commercial that starred Sridevi in it is ringing in my head as I write this piece. I still remember how I watched every film that starred  her with bated breath because her characters were just like I would want to be in life. She was a complete entertainer. She is the true quintessential diva of the film industry. She is the bridge between languages. She is the line between the north and the south. She is somebody who proves that you can have a strong mother tongue accent and make it big in Bollywood. She lived her roles. She lived her characters. She left us moved. She took us with her when she performed. She transported us in that era, that moment, that time and that emotion. You would sometimes hate her when she is proud and avaricious like in Judaai, but then you would be quick to justify her character too. You would empathise with the ‘Anju’ who gets beaten up and molested by ‘Balmaa’ in ‘Chaalbaaz ‘ , but you would believe that she could end up with taxiwala ‘Jaggu ‘ and use her empathy and the fact that she was fearless with an unknown man. She epitomised how one could be empowered once they fear nothing, when they have been through the worst. Sridevi meant all of this to me. 

Sridevi has a huge fan following in the queer community. To many of us, she is Mx India. Sridevi is not a person, she is an emotion that is garnished with love. She is not a gender. She is beyond gender. She is a state of mind. A state of mind where you are in sync with everything around you and your expression is tempered with the ambiance. Sridevi, the loudest cry that echoes back from the blank walls of the closet of the dark cell  that we are shunned into when life directs us to places unknown. Like, in the film ‘Gumrah’, she ensures that she has the key and the escape plan from the prison of the closeted life. She is the serpent within all of us that is in complete acceptance of the poison within, but in the end, chooses the power of love with a human experience,  over being a powerful yet vulnerable reptile. Sridevi is the brutal truth about our memory – the  memory of childhood that lives with us, but when we get to our adult selves we end to forget little kiddish attributes of ours, sometimes forever with also the nice people who brought us up. Sridevi is the Guru that keeps dancing till her last breath. Sridevi is a language of love, of hate, of acceptance. Sridevi is the equilibrium that makes everything in the world equal when it comes to love. Sridevi is the diva within all of us. She is the anger within all of us. She is us. All of us.

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