Hindi film actress Neena Gupta will star in the screen adaptation of chef Vikas Khanna’s upcoming novel The Last Colour, she revealed on her Instagram account.

Khanna’s book follows the friendship between a young tight-rope walker and a widow named Noor in Vrindavan. The duo yearns to play with colours on the occasion of Holi, but Noor and the other widows are held back by tradition. The celebrity chef’s novel will be launched on May 18. The movie will be released in the coming months.

Khanna will be writing and directing the film with Gupta as Noor. “One of the most fulfilling experiences as an actor, a movie where I didn’t have to slip into the role,the minute I put on my whites.... I became Noor,” Gupta said in her Instagram post.

“Pitting the smoke rising from the funeral pyres of Manikarnika Ghat, against the joyous color-bursts of Holi celebrations, Vikas Khanna’s marvellously layered story of the survival of a delicate friendship, is brilliantly told and poignantly life-affirming,” said a press release from publisher Bloomsbury.