Despite playing so many roles in her five-decade career, Sridevi had that rare, inexplicable childlike quality about her, an innocence that bounced off the camera and landed straight into your heart. There are many sequences like that in the 2012 Gauri Shinde directorial English Vinglish, but the one that stayed with me was the reaction of Sridevi’s Shashi as she sees her husband Satish (played by the talented Adil Hussain) embracing a young woman of acquaintance.
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When she sees them together, like the dutiful wife and polite person she is, Shashi eagerly waves off her husband’s guest goodbye, and then proceeds to ask him, “Itne tight se office walon ko gale lagte ho (Do you embrace all your colleagues in this manner)?” When her partner Satish says in exasperation, “It was a hug, Shashi”. She then asks an invasive question, but with a purity that indicates she really didn’t know any better; it hurt her to see Satish hug somebody else like that but she was also curious about how things functioned outside her household. “Bohot kareeb ho tum dono?” (Are you guys very close)?” What a thing to ask one’s spouse… so plain, so simple but also so blunt.
Adil’s character responds with some impatience, “Ye sirf hello bolne ka ek tarika hai, isse karibi rishta nahi banta (This is just how people greet each other, there is nothing more to it)”. Listening to his explanation, she smiles a somewhat naughty and shy smile and says, “Hamara to kareebi rishta hai, isliye hum hug nahi karte hai na (But we share a close bond, is that why we don’t hug like that)?” The scene establishes all her primary character traits in under a minute — honesty, naivety, innocence, curiosity and a desire to do more and know better.
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Speaking about it, actor Adil Hussain told indianexpress.com, “That’s a very interesting scene. Satish is quite presentable and he is very noble too, but in terms of hugging (his own wife), being nice that way with her, he’s shy of that. (Instead, his attitude is more like) ‘It was just a hug, what is your problem?’”
In an earlier interview taken quite a while ago, Adil had mentioned that Sridevi was ‘underutilised’. When asked about what he meant, Adil said, “The kind of scripts she deserved…imagine her getting scripts which Meryl Streep gets! It is a tragedy in Indian film industry, but script writing is considered in the lowest category in terms of the importance it is given. I somehow feel (with) her talent, hard work, dedication to make a character alive with truthfulness, she would have won several Oscars.”
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Adil, while parting, also shared his lasting memory of the late actor on the sets of English Vinglish.
“The first day I met her, I was two films old, hardly any of them had come out then. I remember I looked at her and said I watched Sadma, and after viewing it, I couldn’t eat anything. I had lost the taste in food because the film was so moving and touching, and when I said that, I could see that she had moist eyes. I realised how vulnerable she is, how honest she is with her response, that is the sign of an actor of a very high order,” Adil Hussain signed off.
English Vinglish is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, ZEE5 and YouTube.
