Tarla, about best-selling cookbook writer and television show host Tarla Dalal, follows the biopic formula as faithfully as do her fans her recipes. Piyush Gupta’s film, co-written with Gautam Ved, mostly wallows in the dessert section as it traces Dalal’s formative years.
Tarla (Huma Qureshi), an unassuming housewife and mother of three children, is content with displaying her wizardry in her kitchen. Her engineer husband Nalin (Sharib Hashmi) is the kind of sensitive spouse that most women dream of.
There are moments when Tarla is mildly bothered by her lack of direction. A series of seemingly trivial incidents changes her fortunes. One scene even references a moment from Mr India, which came out in 1987, much after Tarla Dalal’s first recipe book on the joys of vegetarian cooking in 1974.
Among the pivotal incidents in Tarla’s transformation is her mastery of meat-free dishes. Nalin’s tendency to eat meat at work horrifies the vegetarian in Tarla. She reacts to meat consumption as might a woman who has caught her husband having an affair. She comes up with recipes that replace meat with vegetables while retaining the spices.
The Hindi-language film has been premiered on ZEE5. Nearly every scene is about food – its making, its reception, its importance in the grand scheme of things. It’s all that Tarla and Nalin can talk about, even in the bedroom.
With a journey as smooth as a baby’s bottom, the film’s makers sweat hard to come up with bumps. Setbacks assume the flavour of monumental difficulties. But Tarla’s rising fame, which casts a shadow on Nalin’s own career, and the ensuing domestic melodrama when it appears that Tarla is neglecting her family, are dealt with cursorily.
The prevailing cheerful sentiment sometimes feels like the over-sweetened confection prepared by a beloved relative that goes down well on its first bite but then soon leads to gagging. In a more curious biopic that cast the net wider, we might have learnt about the other recipe books that came before Tarla’s first publication, or the wider influences on her chosen path. By isolating Tarla from what is happening around her, the film misses out on the opportunity to chronicle the creation of a publishing phenomenon.
The magnitude of Tarla Dalal’s achievements, and the entrepreneurial drive that surely fuelled her efforts, are largely absent from a movie that has fixed its heroine as a domestic goddess. An attempt to add an ingredient of feminism to Tarla’s feats falls flat. The kitchen might be a prison but good culinary skills can be the key out of it, Tarla tells her students. This kind of debate is better left to films like The Great Indian Kitchen, which explores the drudgery of cooking.
The focus is firmly on Tarla’s marriage, and Nalin’s starring role. We get several cute moments, as well as a winning turn by Sharib Hashmi.
The talented actor is superb as the mild-mannered, progressive husband who backs Tarla to the hilt. Nalin is fond of rating experiences. Your smile is only seven out ten, where did the other three go, he sweetly tells Tarla.
By gently sliding into scenes and eschewing showboating, Hashmi captures the essence of Tarla – the accidental success story of an unlikely culinary star. Hashmi’s task is made easier by his co-actor’s performance.
Saddled with an arc that rarely varies, Huma Qureshi doesn’t move beyond basic competence. Behind some successful women there are supportive men, the movie declares. Behind the biopic of Tarla Dalal, we get a half-cooked measure of her and a better sense of the man who nudged her towards celebrity.