Tabu, the charmer

By: Khalid Mohamed, IndiaFM
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
With Tabs, Tabdi, T, you know where you stand. Some of her friends even call her Tobler and that chocolate brand is even a part of her email id. No pussyfooting, no half-answers, no dangling conversations. She could have cashed in on her National Awards for Maachis and Chandni Bar. She didn't. She could have become the next Smita Patil. She didn't.

Okay so I'm still wary of calling her up for a chat to ask, "T, what's up?" She doesn't have great cell-chat manners, but when it comes to the sms route, she's a perfectionist. Every message is instantly answered, and with correct spellings..no abbreviations.

When I tell my T beta (I'm her 'deds') that I'm writing up this 1,000 worder on her, she does the msg thing, "But why deds. What have I done now?" There there she goes selling herself short all over again.

No discussion is permitted on The Namesake till I've seen it. When I have, she agrees and disagrees with my comments. She's never been the sort to get either all sulky or all chuffed about criticism or praise. But yes, when she mimics a scene from early talkie cinema - playing a gaon ki gori awaiting her lover across the river bank - she rolls over with you on the carpet, doubling up with laughter.

If there was a woman journo who once went to London and bragged, "I was in a bubble bath every day there," Tabu will reenact that piece of precious dialogue and have you shedding tears of laughter.

She's a comedienne, who could have outclassed Sridevi, but didn't seem to get those ha-ha roles like Chaalbaaz because from the outset, it was felt that she was maybe "too serious." Okay she was fantastic as the overwrought Punjabi housewife in a cameo in Biwi No 1 but who remembers her for her sense of ha-ha timing today? The first time I saw T was because of a delayed airflight. The closest spot to crave breakfast was at Shabana Azmi's Janki Kutir openhouse. And there she was fetching bhurji and baasi rotis warmed up. Head covered with a dupatta, the most impish smile on her face since a Walt Disney goblin, and all the adabs of a Muslim girl intact, she was a striking presence. Her aunt Ms Azmi, Shekhar Kapur, Ramesh Sippy and Javed Akhtar all exulted that she would be a huge star some day she had the combo of Nargis and Meena Kumari.

If you ask me Tobler's an original. She appeared as a raped schoolgirl in Dev Anand's shuddersome Hum Naujawan..whenever she's reminded of that performance, she giggles, "I didn't even know what rape meant." A part of her was down-in-thedumps though when the Boney Kapoor produced Prem took eons to get to the cinema halls. A quasibinding contract and a liaison with her screen hero Sanjay Kapoor, couldn't have exactly been good times for the girl from Hyderabad.

She fetched up as an incarnation of Audrey Hepburn opposite Rishi Kapoor in Manmohan Singh's Pehla Pehla Pyaar, inspired by Roman Holiday. Sweet but not happening.

Yet, T has remained fiercely loyal to her early directors Manmohan Singh, Priyadarshan who directed her in Sazaa-e-Kaalapani, and K Raghavendra Rao. Mention their names and she'll go, "Haaaai, they were so nice to me when others weren't." A sting there but she won't explicate.

I'm sure she would have loved to be cast opposite Shah Rukh, Aamir and Salman Khan but she's been too tall for them. She's made the most compatible pair so far with Ajay Devgan (Vijaypath, Haqeeqat) and actually needs no male support as evidenced in Astitiva which showcased one of her best performances. She's not afraid to age in a business where most heroines believe that "to play a mother means digging your own grave." Personally speaking On the personal front, I haven't pried too much neither does she like to go beyond the statement that her father was an Iranian who abandoned her mother and she was brought up in a matriar chal household.

Her mother is a gentle, from all evidence far-from-meddlesome soul the ground for which must have been laid by T's elder sister Farha known for her spitfire ways in her heroinegiri days in the 1980s.

Tabu may be like Farha only. T is less-in-your-face, courteous and withdrawn. However, it's obvious that T can size up men and women on the first meeting, and mimic them from the way they sit to hang their head while talking. I dread to think the take-off she does on me but well that's one birthday gift I'm going to ask her for unashamedly. Man talk Men and T? Good question and a pretty vexing answer. Mostly, she has this flair for getting into relationships with men unequal to her. From what I've seen of her she seemed to be at her happiest when she was seeing Milind Soman (never mind the denials in print). She's a woman of sensuality but I suspect she is not the marrying kind unless the man does that typical number of sweeping her off her feet.

Till then Tabu, I suspect, will be in and out of her Greenacres house in Lokhandwala where her room is like that of a college-going girl's with a softboard, dolls (at last visit) and books galore.

Very adult-like, she'll tell you that she's building herself a house in Hyderabad it's being furnished and so why don't you drop in and see how it's going? If she's winging off to the US for a promoshoot for The Namesake, she'll sms, "You come, naah. New York is so much fun. We'll see plays, movies." I've seen the still photographs she has shot, mainly street pictures. I don't know why she doesn't do more. She writes articles, has been promising to send me a piece for over a decade now. "I am writing deds," she will sms. From Tobler beta, that means she hasn't even started and when she completes it she'll ask, "But it's good, no?"

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