Tarla Review: Delicious film made with the right spices of writing and acting, excellent performance by Huma Qureshi
Behind every successful man there is a woman and behind every successful woman there is a story. This story is simply depicted in the film Tarla, which is based on the life of Padma Shri awardee culinary chef and cook book author Tarla Dalal.
What is the story of Tarla
The story begins from Pune. Tarla (Huma Qureshi) observes her professor’s gait and says that from the way she walks, she will go far in life. Tarla also has to do something, but what, she doesn’t know. Meanwhile, her marriage is fixed with Nalin Dalal (Sharib Hashmi), who works as an engineer in a mill in Mumbai.
Nalin assures her that after marriage she can fulfill her dreams. 12 years pass. Tarla becomes the mother of three children. He realizes that he has not done anything in life. One day Tarla, a vegetarian, sees Nalin eating non-veg. She cooks such vegetarian food for Nalin, which smells like non-vegetarian dishes.
As Murgh Musallam becomes Batata Musallam, Chicken 65 becomes Cabbage 65. A neighboring aunty (Bharti Achrekar) asks Tarla to teach her daughter Kavya how to cook as her marriage is about to be fixed. Kavya wins over her mother-in-law with Tarla’s paneer kofta recipe.
Her mother-in-law allows her to take up a job after marriage. At weddings, many mothers ask Tarla to provide cooking tuition for their daughters. Tarla’s journey that started with a cooking class reaches a cooking show on TV. Was the journey easy? Definitely not.
How is Tarla’s screenplay, dialogues and acting?
Director Piyush Gupta has also co-written the film along with Gautam Ved. The special thing about the story is that no unnecessary drama has been shown in it. How a simple girl with a dream to do something in her eyes, takes small steps to make an extraordinary career in a field that is not considered to be an art, is inspiring.
In Tarla’s story, the writers did not let her lose Nalin, her biggest support system. From being a supportive husband, to wife earning more and not being able to take care of the house, all the aspects showing glimpses of male ego have been taken care of. The film moves at a slow pace, but Piyush’s tight direction does not lead to boredom.
Tarla had given the name of art to the work of cooking. He proved that not only money can be earned from this work, but people’s hearts can also be won. In such a situation, there was a need to show Tarla’s journey from a housewife to a celebrity chef in some detail, which was quickly covered.
The saying of his own mother that he left the heroine outside and came back… she became a monkey after getting her hair cut… or the neighbor says that she has done so much, now will she climb Mount Kailash, pay some attention to the house, the children are growing up. .. not only makes a daughter-in-law wife and mother feel guilty, but also in an unspoken way points to the increasing pressure on the woman due to the thought of men not helping with household chores.
Small moments of the seventies and eighties of the last century, in which Nalin fixes the antenna to receive the signal, turns the dial with his fingers, calls the typewriter, all these have been captured on camera by cinematographer Salu K. Thomas.
