Tabu
 They’d almost completed her obituary. Just waiting for her to wave a final adieu, when Gulzar appeared on the scene all of a sudden and gave a new twist to the Tabu saga. He had emerged from a five year hibernation to announce a film which triggered immediate curiosity because of its unlikely title, Maachis. And what fuelled the speculation and the anticipation was his choice of the cast. A bearded hero whom Subhash Ghai had rejected for Vivek Mushran in Saudagar. And a heroine whose only claim to fame was a Ruk ruk ruk and a thunder thighs tag. “I still wonder how and why he thought of me then,” Tabu says with a bemused expression. But she’s gratified that he did, because Maachis changed her life and career. It's amazing what the success of the film did to Tabu. It gave the actress, who had almost been written off, a National Award. Suddenly she was being raved about as an actress par excellence. A sensitive cameo in Kala Pani, two-scene appearance in Border and a compelling performance in Virasat, and Tabu had the dream merchants weaving big dreams around her. When Sooraj Barjatya announced his next film, Hum Aapke Hain Saath, no one was surprised to see Tabu’s name in the cast. When Deepa Mehta was in the country recently scouting around for a heroine for a forthcoming project, Tabu was the girl she was told to look up, and Tabu it will be once she wraps up Earth. Even the Big B was so impressed with the Gehna of Virasat, despite all the oil she’d soaked her lustrous tresses in, that she’s in his just launched film, Kohraam, directed by Mehul Kumar. So when Gulzar started Hu Tu Tu it was a foregone conclusion that she would be in this film too. The only one perhaps who hadn’t expected him to repeat her was Tabu herself. “It was a second dream come true,” she says honestly.
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