The tiresomely moody Tabu, who is quite capable of dropping out of sight and remaining unavailable for the promotion of her own starrers (ask Sunny Deol’s cousin Guddu Dhanoa, who directed Hawa), is unpredictable enough to also make a promise and keep it under any circumstances.

An insider reveals that the BR Films banner has been seeing the sunny side of Tabu. A few years ago when Ravi Chopra was casting the lead actors for Baghban, Tabu had been one of the first actresses he approached for the role of Amitabh Bachchan’s wife. Tabu had read the script and said ‘nyet’ because she couldn’t picture herself playing mother to grown-up children like Aman Verma and Divya Dutta.

Ravi Chopra was sporting enough to take Tabu’s ‘no’ with a smile and they decided that even if she had refused his film they would keep in touch and remain friends. Ravi, by the way, has a friendly, affectionate wife in Renu Chopra who is the one who really maintains warm, happy relationships with everybody, irrespective of whether they work for her husband or not.

Ravi Chopra went on to make Baghban with Hema Malini in the role that Tabu had turned down. As we all know, on release the film changed everybody’s fortunes at the box-office, the audience bowled over by Hema-Amitabh’s crackling chemistry. Tabu was in the South with her relatives when Baghban hit the theatres and she went with an assortment of uncles and aunts to see the film. Her family was so awestruck by the film that all of them collectively wanted to bonk her on the head for having refused this role. Chastised and also candid, Tabu told Ravi and Renu Chopra just how much everybody had loved the film and how they had pulled her up for not doing it. The Chopras are too civilised to say, ‘We told you so’, but they were impressed when Tabu went on to promise them that in their next film, if Ravi asked her to do even just a passing shot, she’d do it without demur.

The next film they made was Baabul in which they could’ve asked Tabu to do the role of the widow that Sarika finally did. But Ravi Chopra played fair. Although Tabu renewed her promise to do any role he gave her, B.R. Chopra’s son thought it would be unfair to take her up on it. So, although Tabu was game, he didn’t make her a part of Baabul.

Baabul was no Baghban at the box-office; in fact it was quite a debacle. But Tabu’s offer stood. The Chopras are today quietly making a well-scripted comedy (loosely inspired by My Cousin Vinny) with Govinda (playing the title role of the lawyer) and Lara Dutta (playing his dumb female interest). Interestingly, Tabu has been cast in a strong role as the public prosecutor. The role has been specially written for Tabu. In fact, it didn’t exist in the original film. True to her word, Tabu is said to have come aboard without any questions about her role or her fee. She had promised Ravi Chopra she’d do any role in his film, so here she was.

For the Chopras, it has happily turned into an intriguing, curious cast, with an appealing freshness about it. So far Tabu has been impeccable. Keep your fingers crossed that the current sporting mood remains till ‘The End’ is canned. Check this out with Balki who made the refreshing Cheeni Kum with Tabu. It didn’t show in the final product but the inside buzz is that Tabu just didn’t hit it off with Balki and working in his next film Papa (with Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan) is now out of the question for Tabu.

How curious life turns out. If Tabu had worked with Amitabh Bachchan in Baghban, perhaps Cheeni Kum wouldn’t have been as delightfully fresh as it was. Because Tabu didn’t do Baghban and wished she had, maybe that helped her make up her mind over doing The Namesake with Irrfan Khan (after Rani Mukherji had turned it down) where she played mother to adult children. And Baghban worked because Hema-Amitabh were the perfect couple — perhaps Tabu wouldn’t have pulled it off as well at that time. So life does ultimately work out well, doesn’t it?

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International