In the ’80s and ’90s, rare was an urban Indian home that did not have at least one Tarla Dalal cookbook. At the time — when we were decades away from MasterChef, and foodgasm had not earned a place in our vocabulary — the chef-food writer dominated the Indian food scene with her multiple cookbooks and culinary shows. Now, the late Dalal’s journey will be retold in a biopic to be headlined by Huma Qureshi. We hear Ronnie Screwvala, Nitesh and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari will jointly back the biopic, which will be helmed by the filmmaker couple’s associate Piyush Gupta.

The project is expected to go on floors in the coming months. “Huma longed to do a biopic. When this movie came her way, it ticked that box. She loved the storyline that traces how Tarla Dalal revolutionised Indian cooking, particularly vegetarian fare,” says a source.

What started as a humble cooking class from Dalal’s Mumbai home in 1966 soon became immensely popular, paving the way for a series of classes and her first cookbook, The Pleasures Of Vegetarian Cooking in 1974. Her easy recipes and ability to adapt foreign cuisines for the Indian palate made her books a prized possession among homemakers. Couple that with her genial manner, and she was the perfect face to begin the trend of culinary shows on television. Interestingly, the late food writer, who passed away in 2013, remains the only one in her field to be honoured with the Padma Shri.

Sources say that Qureshi has already done her look test, and begun prepping for the part. The source adds, “Huma has been reading up a lot on Tarla, and watching the material shared by the filmmakers. She will also have to perfect Tarla’s soft-spoken manner and diction.”

Meanwhile, the makers are in the process of finalising the supporting cast.