Saira Banu and Hema Malini wish Rekha on her birthday with fond memories

Rekha's birthday brought warm wishes from two of her oldest friends in Hindi cinema, Saira Banu and Hema Malini. Each looked back on years of shared memories.

Saira Banu wrote a long personal note about their days at Filmistan, when the two shot on sets close to each other. Rekha would often drop into her makeup room and sit on the sofa, watching makeup artiste Dinu Endulkar do Saira's eyes. Once she told Saira she wanted to copy that look.

The veteran actress also remembered yoga classes they took together at the Sea Rock Hotel, trading notes on which asanas helped with what. While the unit travelled for Qila, the film Rekha made with Dilip Kumar, Rekha would ask her to come and exercise. The two even sang and performed together at one of the charity shows Dilip Kumar championed, in front of a crowd Saira put at 40 to 50 thousand people.

Moved by the admiration Rekha has shown for Dilip Kumar, Saira went on to call Rekha's Umrao Jaan a treasured jewel of Indian cinema.

Hema Malini posted pictures of the two smiling together on social media. "Happy birthday dear Rekha God bless you always with joy, good health and prosperity," she wrote.

That friendship goes back to their Chennai days. On the singing reality show Indian Idol, Hema had recalled learning Bharatanatyam and then Kuchipudi under guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, with a much younger Rekha in the same classes. The guru, she said, kept complaining that the girl ran away from rehearsals. Hema also remembered Rekha playing Narad Muni in a Kuchipudi ballet about Krishna, Rukmini and Satyabhama, and said she looked adorable in the costume.

Their mothers, Pushpavalli and Jaya Chakravarty, share a birthday on January 3, Hema added, and the two families used to celebrate it together.