Sridevi had never made a political comment or participated in a prominent national role, in, say, the way late actor Sunil Dutt did.
In addition to entertaining troops during the 1962 and 1965 wars, Dutt had marched from Bombay to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to pray for peace in 1987, when militancy in Punjab was at its peak. His daughter, the Congress leader, Priya Dutt, was also part of the march.
But Sridevi, perhaps unwittingly, may have played a larger role in bringing peace to Punjab!
It was sometime in 1993, when the actor was shooting in Chandigarh. 'Supercop' K.P.S. Gill, then the director general of police, had the charge of ensuring her security.
Sridevi was provided accommodation in the Punjab Police's G O Mess, which was also where Gill lived. He hosted a dinner in Sridevi's honour and invited a few of the city's opinion makers, as well as a few reporters with their spouses to the off-the-record event.
The next morning, he told Sridevi that there was total peace in Punjab and took her for a walk along the Sukhna Lake to let her see and feel the peace.
While she was a big star, he was the legendary police officer, and for the locals, a bigger star. People on their morning walks and those who had heard of it thronged to see the walk that lasted for over 90 minutes, with Gill's armed security men nowhere visible. But every news cameraman in town was there!
As they crowded around the duo, Gill told Sridevi that he had seen Chandni over 50 times! The photo of the police chief taking a beautiful leading lady for a walk along the lake made it to the front page of every major daily in English, Hindi and other languages the next morning.
Sridevi's visit came at a time when Punjab was coming out of the woods, and many top militant leaders had been gunned down by the police. Gill was telling the world that Punjab was safe for investors and people who had fled and for the country, he was saying that militants had been flushed out and finished.
But that one photo of Gill and Sridevi sent out a strong message that Punjab was so peaceful that the police chief had the time to almost openly flirt with a Bollywood star. It was indeed one photo that spoke more than the police chief's thousand words.
Much later, reminiscing about the turbulent years, Gill confessed that he had no idea what Chandni was about. The last film he had seen then was Mother India!