Birthday Special: MOHABBAT KO KABHI HAARNE NAHI DENA, TABU. AGAR TUMHARI MOHABBAT SACHI HO TOH MOHABBAT LAUT KAR TUMHARE PASS AAYEGI, ZAROOR

Yes , God is great, yes God is all kind and all loving, but God is very clever too . He has not blessed all human beings with all the best qualities, because i strongly feel that he believes that if man is blessed with everything , he or she may become arrogant and proud and even become a threat to him - Ali Peter John

I realized this truth when my mother once told me , " Thank God, God has made you physically weak or i don't know what you would have done ".

Even the great Dilip Kumar was not blessed with all the best qualities and virtues. He was a great human being and a greater actor, but he was deprived of many other things , like the cruse of not having a heir to his legacy , a weakness that many have discussed during his lifetime and are discussing more now .

And at this point of time , I am thinking of the extremely talented and sensitive actress Tabu who has proved herself to be one of the better actresses, has won several awards and has been accepted as the hope for great cinema.

But , if there is one field in which she has been a failure, it has been in finding true love... I feel very happy when i remember that evening when i was sitting with Dev Anand at his pent house and two girls from Hyderabad had walked in .

The older girl called Farah Naaz was very beautiful and had the ambition to be an actress.

The other girl was a baby and her name was Tabassum . Dev Sahab had an eye to find and encourage talent whether it was Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman , his own brother, Vijay Anand or Balraj Sahni, S.D Burman or R.D Burman or Raakhee or Dharmendra or Shatrughan Sinha or Zeenat Aman.

He had one look at Farah and said , " This girl will go very far unless she harms her own life and career " .

Dev Sahab was to cast Farah in his very next flim, but news about him finding a new girl spread in the industry and some of the leading flim makers wanted to cast her .

But , it was Yash Chopra who talked to Dev Sahab and requested him to allow him to cast her in his flim, "Faasle " in which she would be the romantic lead opposite Rohan Kapoor, the son of the singer Mahendra Kapoor.

Dev Sahab never believed in binding any artist under a contract and asked Yash Chopra to go ahead and cast Farah and with the casting of Farah in a Yash Chopra flim she became a star over night, inspite of Faasle being one of the few flops Yash Chopra made.

Farah was well on the way to the top , till she spoilt her own chances by her reckless behavior.

Farah has now almost become a part of history and a lesson for all young actresses to learn from.

But Dev Sahab had not forgotten the little girl Tabassum who he had seen sitting quietly in a corner at his pent house.

He wrote a script revolving round a 12 year old girl and her misadventures in a city like Bombay .

He made a flim called " Hum Naujawaan" with Baby Tabassum ( the name he gave her for the flim) .

The flim was not a very good experience for both Dev Sahab and Baby Tabassum. And the little girl took a break and came back as a grown up girl and was cast as the romantic lead in Boney Kapoor's "Prem" in which Boney introduced his brother Sanjay Kapoor.

'Prem ' took several years to complete and Baby Tabassum who was now called Tabu was frustrated at times. She couldn't sign any new flim till Prem was complete .

And she was more frustrated when Prem flopped but those who knew what talent was recognized the talent in Tabu and she was cast in several B grade flims , till she shone out in flims like "HAQEEQAT" and finally found her rightful place when Gulzar signed her as the lead character in his sensitive flim, "Maachis " and she was so good in the flim that she won the National Award for her performance.

That was the beginning of the real Tabu who Dev Anand had seen even when he saw her as Baby .

And after "Chandini Bar " in which she played a dancer in a bar and won her second National Award and many other private awards, there has been no stopping her .

She has done flims in Telugu, Tamil , Hindi ,Marathi and even English. And today at 54 when she has completed 30 years as an actress, she is easily one of the best actresses we have .

But , like I said in the beginning, Tabu has received more than any other women can even dream of . However, she has till now not found the love she has been looking for .

She had a rumored affair with her hero of "Prem", Sanjay Kapoor, but nothing came of it . She had her second affair with Ajay Devgn while they were doing some ordinary flims together, but this so called affair also ended and Tabu was growing better even wild her career was shooting up .

She had another tumultuous affair with Sajid Nadiadwala who was her best friend Divya Bharti's husband before she could die under mysterious circumstances.

There were believable stories about their even getting married and living in the same apartment.

But , this love story also came to an end. And then Tabu found love in Nagarjuna, the big star of Telugu and some Hindi flims .

Tabu was now seen more in Hyderabad than in Mumbai. Stories about their affair were rampant for years , but suddenly all stories about the couple came to an end and Tabu came back to Mumbai with her heart broken one more time.

The reason for their break up was to be Nagarjuna's first marriage with the one time actress Amla .

Nagarjuna didn't want to end his first marriage and Tabu wanted him to end his first marriage if he had to continue having a relationship with her . The tussle ended in a bitter separation.

And now , Tabu is living all alone with her mother who has been her strongest support in one of the most beautiful and expensive apartment in Mumbai.

Will Tabu still wait for love to come in to her life , or will she live with a memories of her previous love stories all her life? She may feel that fifty four is too old to fall in love again and get married .

As her great well wisher who have been a witness to her rise and rise as an actress and as a person i would like to tell her that that love knows no age or any kind of barrier. Love is love and it can happen to anyone at any time.

Hasn't she heard of the veteran and talented actress, Suhasini Mulay ( She has worked with Tabu in Gulzar's last flim , Hu Tu Tu) who fell in love and got married when she was in her sixties ?

PYAAR KARNA KOI ASAAN CHEEZ NAHI . PYAAR EK TAUFA HAI JO KABHI KABHI MILTA HAI.

PYAAR KE SAATH KOI KHEL NAHI HOTA . PYAAR KARO TOH POORE DIL AUR JAAN SE KARO PHIR DEKHO PYAAR KI KAISE JEET HOTI HAI, TABU .