As Indian movie fans grapple with the loss of their beloved icon Sridevi and attend her funeral in Mumbai, here’s a recap on her immediate family. Sridevi didn’t just touch millions of lives with her films, but left a family of three whose lives will never remain the same again. Meet the survivors who have to grapple with this personal tragedy of losing their loved one ...
Jahnvi Kapoor, Sridevi and Boney Kapoor’s elder daughter
She’s 19 and is all set to make her Bollywood acting debut with Dhadak, a project by director-producer Karan Johar.
It’s believed that she gave the Ras Al Khaimah wedding, which her parents attended before the sudden death of Sridevi, a miss because she was filming for her July debut along with Ishaan Khattar, actor Shahid Kapoor’s half-brother. Though everyone is yet to see her acting prowess, Jahnvi is already a household name because of her swish lifestyle and her active social media account. Her Instagram handle, though not verified with a blue tick, has 87.7k followers.
Seen with the likes of designer Manish Malhotra and other star kids such as Sara Ali Khan (actor Saif Ali Khan’s daughter), her every move was documented and looked like a diary of a Mumbai princess. Even her daily visits to the gym, where she trains with celebrity trainer Yasmin Karachiwala, gets attention from the press. If her pictures are any indication, she seems to have enjoyed a close relationship with her mother.
In an earlier interview with Gulf News tabloid!, Sridevi sounded incredibly proud of her daughters and described herself as an ordinary mother.
“I am a simple, ordinary mother. I am after their lives all the time, making their lives miserable saying eat, eat, eat and sleep, sleep, sleep... But there’s one dialogue [in Mom, her last Bollywood film] which says our job as a parent is not to make them understand, but to understand them. This is very poignant and important, that it is not necessary to give them lectures. I apply that to my life too,” said Sridevi, in that interview last June.
Khushi Kapoor, their second daughter
She is 17 and is already a bona fide fashionista. Her every public appearance looks straight out of a glossy magazine and she seems to living up her life just like any other teenager. She’s yet to announce any ambition of entering the world of films, but there’s no denying her growing influence among tweens.
Boney Kapoor, her husband
Boney Kapoor, the husband of the late icon Sridevi who died in Dubai on Saturday night due to accidental drowning as per local forensic reports, is a prolific Bollywood producer who poured his money in over twenty Hindi films in a career spanning three decades. Belonging to a film family, the son of late producer Surinder Kapoor who made his production debut in 1980, has a career catalogue with a mix of blockbusters and duds. The 63-year-old filmmaker’s biggest productions include Mr India with Anil Kapoor and his late wife, Wanted with A-lister Salman Khan, while his flops include Roop Ki Raani … Choron Ka Raja and Tevar with his son Arjun Kapoor.
Kapoor — a Punjabi by birth — had has hand on the pulse of an average Bollywood movie-goers’ taste.
“I never had a preconceived notion about what I should do or what I should take up... I am not that intelligent. I am like a common man who is dictated by what I like and I sometimes feel that if something good, I should produce it... Aks was my first film that I distributed, it wasn’t a mainstream film but I loved what I saw in it I liked. There are no fixed notions on what I should pick up or follow, it has to first appeal to me,” said Kapoor in an earlier interview.
While he was a consummate producer, his personal life was relatively fractured. Kapoor was married to the late Mona Shourie in 1983 and had two children from his first marriage. However, their marriage was marred by rumours of alleged affair with his then-colleague Sridevi. Film folklore has it that when he approached Sridevi’s mother for a film as a producer (back in the day, an actress’ mother doubled up as their publicists), he was at his generous best. He topped up her acting fee so that she would jump aboard his film. The colleagues became man and wife in 1996, when they wed despite reported objections from his own family.
During our interview, he didn’t seem to hide his reflected pride for Sridevi. In several other interviews in the past, he had open declared his admiration for his wife.
“Imagine an actor who started working at the age of four and it is her 50th year of her professional career. Her focus is still the same. When we call [Mom] her 300th film, it could be more. Her mother who used to manage her career is no more — so there is no proper record, but I have put numbers together. She is unmatched and there’s no one like her — it is a fact. I can watch her 24/7,” he said.
