In 1994, as a teenager, I watched a fairly terrible film called Laadla. It starred Anil Kapoor, Sridevi and Raveena Tandon. It was loud, sexist – actually, make that misogynistic – and eminently forgettable.
Except for Sridevi, who I couldn’t get out of my head. For months after the film released, my cousins and I played the ‘Understand? You better understand game’. In the film, Sridevi played a tycoon who arbitrarily and rudely ended conversations by staring people in the eye, clicking her fingers and declaring, ‘Understand? You better understand!’.
The person on the other end usually was the hapless Anil Kapoor who she would go on to sell for two crore rupees in yet another terrible film of the nineties, Judaai. I now understand only too well why I was a Sridevi fan – she was not just terrific in terrific films (Mr India, Chaalbaaz, Lamhe etc), she was terrific in terrible films too.
I still giggle to myself as I remember her in Judaai – she has just sold off her husband and sends him packing from their bedroom because his side of the mattress has the money she is now lolling on. It sounds ridiculous even as I describe it – it was ridiculous, but Sridevi wasn’t, even as she made a fine art of caricature.