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.

“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 ‘Badhaai Ho’ 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.

Delhi-born Sikri learnt and honed her craft at National School of Drama and was a valued member of the repertory company during its high noon. Fellow actor M K Raina remembers getting blown away by her art. “I had the privilege of acting with her for the NSD repertory production, ‘Kabhi Na Chhode Khet’. There’s a scene when her son dies. I had never seen that kind of range of acting. Again in Ebrahim Alkazi-directed John Osborne’s play, ‘Look Back In Anger’, she was simply, wow. Unfortunately, there are no videos of her work done those days. Even in a television serial like ‘Balika Vadhu’, you could see she was a class apart,” says Raina, a year junior to her at NSD.

Two of her much-remembered plays are ‘Aadhe Adhure’ and ‘Sandhya Chhaya’, where she acted with Manohar Singh, another titan of Delhi theatre. Sikri received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1989.

Renowned film director Shyam Benegal remembers her as a “flawless” performer. “Her theatre training had made her an extremely disciplined actress. When you went on the sets when she was acting, you didn’t have to tell her. You gave her the scenes and she worked it out herself. She knew which costumes she had to wear, got her make-up done and was absolutely ready with the lines she had to speak...In a couple of takes, you would have a performance of the highest quality,” Benegal told TOI over phone. 

Apart from ‘Mammo’, he directed her in ‘Sardari Begum’, ‘Zubeida’ and ‘Hari Bhari’, where Sikri was first-rate as the family matriarch who has to fight old-age ailments and play judge, jury and peacemaker to the quibbling bahus at the same time.

Raina says that out of stage, Sikri was “happy-go-lucky”. During a brief phone interview last year, she had revealed an impish side to this reporter. Sikri spoke of skipping class once at NSD to watch the movie, ‘Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines’, and getting caught…“We were suspended for a week from attending classes,” she had said.

Not many know Sikri had also translated Bertolt Brecht’s ‘The Threepenny Opera’. “She had great command over both Hindustani and English,” says Raina. He sums up, “Meticulous, thinking and questioning, she was one of India’s front-ranking actors who has left a great legacy in theatres, in films and on television.”

----------------------

Mumbai: Surekha Sikri was the sister-in-law of Naseeruddin Shah by his first marriage to her sister Manara (Parveen Murad). Both actors were also an integral part of the theatre circuit in Delhi. “It’s extremely sad that she passed away just as she was tasting some much delayed, but much deserved success and acclaim. Life is very unfair sometimes,” Shah told TOI.