Janhvi Kapoor used Halloween this year to reach into Hindi cinema’s memory. She recreated the ichchadhari naagin look made famous by her mother Sridevi in the 1986 fantasy thriller Nagina, down to the vintage jewellery, maang-tika and bindi.
A poster brought back to life
The tribute was not a solo costume. Janhvi enlisted social media personality Orry to step into Rishi Kapoor’s role and photographer Vaishnav Praveen to play Bhairo Nath, the snake-charmer originally played by Amrish Puri. Together, the three reworked the film’s original promotional poster.
The outfit, in pink and ivory, was custom-designed by Nidhi Halani. Janhvi’s expression and hand movements deliberately invoked Sridevi’s Rajni. On Instagram, she called the film moment “one of the most iconic movie moments everrrr.” Her sister Khushi Kapoor responded, “You have won Halloween,” while Kareena Kapoor Khan and Karisma Kapoor added their appreciation.
Why Nagina still matters
For readers who follow Hindi cinema’s history, Nagina is more than a costume reference. Directed and produced by Harmesh Malhotra, it starred Sridevi, Rishi Kapoor and Amrish Puri, and became the second-highest-grossing Indian film of 1986. Its story of Rajiv and Rajni, a marriage disturbed by the snake-charmer Bhairo Nath and the revelation of Rajni’s identity as an ichchadhari naagin, gave the film a lasting place in popular memory.
Sridevi’s Rajni did not simply anchor a hit; she established a visual grammar for the shape-shifting snake-woman that later films and television serials would borrow for decades. The song “Main Teri Dushman, Dushman Tu Mera,” sung by Lata Mangeshkar, is among the film’s most remembered sequences.
- 1986: Harmesh Malhotra’s Nagina reaches cinemas and becomes the year’s second-biggest Indian grosser.
- The cast: Sridevi, Rishi Kapoor and Amrish Puri lead a fantasy built around an ichchadhari naagin and a snake-charmer.
- The legacy: Sridevi’s Rajni sets the screen image of the avenging snake-woman for generations.
- The tribute: Janhvi Kapoor, Orry and Vaishnav Praveen recreate the original poster for Halloween 2026.
What it means now
This is not the first time a younger actor has borrowed from a parent’s most recognisable work, but it is a particularly legible example. By restaging the poster rather than simply wearing the costume, Janhvi turned a Halloween post into a small act of archive-keeping. It invites an audience that may not have seen Nagina in a theatre to discover the original, and it gives older viewers a precise object of shared memory.
Source: The News Mill
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