A strange series of Sadhana-centric coincidences happened over the past fortnight or so. A new reader—a die-hard Sadhana fan—suddenly arrived on my blog, and commented enthusiastically on just about each of the Sadhana film reviews I’d posted. Then in an e-mail exchange with blog reader Neeru, I mentioned to her that my mother used to look astonishingly like Sadhana in her younger days. Sufficiently like Sadhana, in fact, to invite the complete unwelcome attentions of neighbourhood loiterers who would call out, “Sadhana! Sadhana!” when my mother would emerge from her home in Calcutta. Enough, too, for my father (then only my mum’s fiancé, not her husband yet) to be asked by a cousin—who had never seen my mother but saw her photo on my father’s desk—to remark, “I didn’t know you were such a fan of Sadhana’s.”

Then Anu reviewed Aarzoo, and I couldn’t help but recount an incident related to that film and to my mother’s resemblance to the actress.

So much Sadhana. And I thought: I really must do a list of Sadhana songs someday. After all, she’s one of my absolute favourite actresses. This is long overdue.

Instead, on Christmas morning, I heard the news that Sadhana had passed away.

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