Here's A Recap Of Tabu's Powerhouse Performances Over The Years!

As the dynamic lady of our industry who has over the years built a charismatic screen presence with her sheer emotions, Tabu celebrates her 45^th birthday today. Let’s take a tour down to some of her most interesting performances till date, straight from the heart of a fan! 

In my mind her best performance is Cheeni Kum! Nina played by Tabu is one of the rarest combinations of an attractive woman with a mind of her own. The way she politely puts an aggressive cocky chef played by Amitabh in his place is pure treat to watch. In fact when we look at the sheer chemistry between her and Amitabh you wonder if she was born a decade or so earlier we could have got another interesting on screen pair between her and Amitabh. Cheeni Kum remains one of our most mature and entertainingly written romantic movies in the last decade and Tabu’s effort as Nina an emotional yet fiercely independent woman is a brilliant effort.

Today there will be many write ups on the net which will celebrate her politically correct performances. All that praise this lady richly deserves. Yet today I would briefly point what has been missed by the purists. The way Tabu could have excelled in masala Bollywood too, if only the makers would have given more attention to her. The case in point is this David Dhawan Superhit called Biwi No.1 . This one was made to totally showcase Karisma Kapoor. However Tabu’s brief cameo as the jealous and down to earth Sardarni wife of Anil Kapoor. Tabu was the actual show stopper. The scene in the climax where she rushes to kill herself is stuff of comic legends. In that one scene which remains etched in our cinematic memory we find how she deserved to be in more Khiladi and No.1 kind of movies while she did have to be in a Maachis or a Hu Tu Tu .

The only other performance which left me totally spell bound is her portrayal of Nimmi , the other woman in Abbaji’s life in the Vishal Bharadwaj classic Maqbool. If there is one numero uno performance for a vamp in Indian cinema without any doubt it is Nimmi. She is vengeful and compassionate at the same time. Nimmi is complicated and pure evil at times. Single handedly using her charm and tears she brings a powerful gangster clan to its ruins. Nimmi in my book is to Indian cinema vamps what Gabbar Singh is to its villains. She literally steals the scenes away from titans like Pankaj Kapoor and Irfan in that movie.

I also have to write this often some writers have used one line to describe Tabu’s glamour quotient. She is labeled the thinking man’s sex symbol. Nothing could be more hollow and far away from truth. Tabu is just simply sensuous, a man’s capability to think or not has no bearing on this other simple screen fact about her.