‘Flawless' performer Surekha Sikri dead

Surekha Sikri, whose precise and nuanced acting enlivened and elevated Delhi theatre scene in the 1970s and who delivered a clutch of pitch-perfect performances in films and television, passed away after a heart attack in Mumbai on Friday morning. She was 76.

- Avijit Ghosh

“She had been suffering from complications arising from a second brain stroke,” the actor’s agent Vivek Sidhwani told PTI. The first stroke occurred last September.

Whatever the medium, Sikri approached every part with sincerity and sensitivity; her acting always informed by an intense yet elegant aesthetics. One of her three national awards came for ‘Mammo’ (1994), for her finely-grained depiction of insecurity and anxiety that the part required. The other two came in Govind Nihalani’s ‘Tamas’ (1988) and director Amit Sharma’s ‘Badhaai Ho’ (2018).

Sikri’s cantankerous rustic mother-in-law in ‘BadhaaiHo’ ranks among her finest performances and endeared her to a new generation of filmgoers. “Her dialogue delivery, gestures, voice modulation and understanding of characters was amazing. And who can forget the sparkle of those eyes?” asks Arvind Gaur, director, Asmita theatre.