One of the really unnecessary compromises that was made in the lazy Hindi remake of Drishyam was the addition of a line that Ajay Devgn's older daughter, a school-going teenager, was adopted. This was not there in either the Malayalam original (also titled Drishyam , starring Mohanlal) or the Tamil version (titled Papanasam, starring Kamal Haassan). The line that was forced into the Hindi counterpart was patently silly because it did nothing for the plot or the film; it was no value addition. Obviously, it had been added only to appease hero Ajay Devgn, who didn't want to be shown as the father of a grown up kid, never mind if she was still only in school. One can't help feeling that instead of concentrating on pleasing his hero so brainlessly, if director Nishikant Kamath had taken the same pains over every other department of the remake, perhaps Ajay Devgn's Drishyam would not be the only flop version of an inherently clever plot.

It was extremely childish also because Tabu - who played the mother of a boy who was either older or the same age as Ajay's "adopted" daughter in the film - had no problems with being a teenager's biological parent. Tabu was born in 1971 which makes her 43 years old. Ajay is older than her by three years: his birth year is 1969, he turned 46 this April. So conventionally, who should have shied away from playing mother to a teenager? The well-maintained 43-year-old actress or the 46-year-old male? Which gender in any case is supposed to be age conscious, male or female?

Ajay Devgn's misplaced vanity blows to pieces what the age-old answer would have been to both questions.

It is to Tabu's credit that in Drishyam , and earlier in Haider, she played mother to grown up children without greying her hair or losing an ounce of her sensuality. Let's not forget that Shahid Kapoor, who played Haider, her son in the film, is 34 years old and Tabu is only 9 years older than him. It's a biological impossibility that she could have become a mother when she was nine years old. Yet Tabu didn't resort to that logic and turn down the assignment. It was not even a sympathy-evoking weeping widow's role. In fact she was quite the merry widow in it. But Tabu saw it as a fabulous challenge and went on to be applauded for it. At no stage did anybody write her off as the old mother of a 34-year-old.

That's where Tabu has begun to score as an actress. She scores over diffident men like Ajay Devgn and over her fussier, older female colleagues like Rekha. A few months ago, Rekha and director Abhishek Kapoor (of Kai Po Che and Rock On! fame) couldn't agree on the way she was being presented in the film Fitoor , after they'd begun shooting for it. People on the set would come out with tales of Rekha obsessing over her "angle" and "look".

The actress has known Abhishek as Gattu (his pet name) from the time he was in the cradle, since he is her old co-star Jeetendra's nephew. Yet Rekha "walked out" of Fitoor and in walked Tabu. Whether Rekha stepped out of the film or Gattu himself wanted her out will be an eternal debate. But what it did prove was that even a 60-plus Rekha was so particular about her image that unless she looked "beautiful-old" she was not comfortable doing a film.

Rekha is not worried about playing mother or even grandmother, but she has to look stunning. She unhesitatingly did the title role of Super Nani just last year because she had a Khoon Bhari Maang kind of transformation in it where the grandma morphed into a glamorous model. It's looking good, whatever the age, that matters to Rekha.

That way Sridevi must be cheered for making her comeback in English Vinglish , where she played not just mother to a grown up daughter but also wore drab cotton saris. At no point did she try to justify being a mother by having a line put in about an early marriage or something like Ajay Devgn did in Drishyam. It is equally admirable that in no scene did she yearn to look glamorous, not even in a dance sequence. There was an honesty in the making and in her performance and that reached out to the audience.

One hears that unlike Tabu and Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla are inclined to be more like Rekha. They won't compromise with their image, whatever it may be today. It is believed that when Zoya Akhtar scripted Dil Dhadakne Do , she had toyed with the idea of approaching Madhuri to play Anil Kapoor's wife (the role that finally went to Shefali Shah). But it would also have meant playing mother to Priyanka Chopra and Ranvir Singh. The story goes that when Anil Kapoor, who knew his dhak-dhak co-star well, heard about Zoya's plans he chuckled and told the director, "Don't even go near Madhuri with this role."

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author