(From left) Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari; a still from Tarla

At first glance, the worlds of Bawaal and Tarla have nothing in common. One is about a small-town teacher who accepts his vulnerabilities, the other about a Mumbai homemaker who realises her strengths and becomes a famous home-chef and cookbook author. But to producer Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, they are bound by a common thread. “Our stories evoke empathy, inspiration and aspiration in the audience,” she reflects.

Yesterday, Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor’s Bawaal dropped on Amazon Prime Video. Telling a story of self-discovery, Nitesh Tiwari’s directorial venture is introspective, and poles apart from the larger-than-life entertainers that most filmmakers are churning out. To Iyer, it is an attempt to create hunger for different stories in the audience.

“While discussing Bawaal, Nitesh said, ‘Until we give something new to the audiences, how will they know whether they want it or not?’ As storytellers, it’s important to tell such stories. For instance, the essence of Tarla comes from how, during the lockdown, all of us watched homemakers’ videos in which they shared wonderful recipes.”

Based on the life of famous home-chef Tarla Dalal, the eponymous biopic premièred earlier this month. The Huma Qureshi-starrer holds a special meaning for Iyer for its ability to make women across ages feel seen.

“The story of Tarla is from ages ago, but it’s resonating with the younger audience [because] they have seen their mothers go through the same [experiences]. Huma has breathed life into the film. Sharib [Hashmi] was so happy that he called and said, ‘Thank you for choosing me to headline a film,’” recounts Iyer.

Even as her work, as a director and a producer, continues to subvert gender roles, Iyer says she faced casual sexism at the beginning of her career. She says it took some time for the media to treat her professional identity separate from that of her filmmaker-husband.

“In the beginning, I was always referred to as Nitesh Tiwari’s wife. Nitesh would feel bad about it. He would say, ‘You are an equal director. What is this all about?’ But then, there was one article that referred to Nitesh as Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s husband. I felt a sense of happiness because change had taken place. Now, it has become a blind spot; it doesn’t matter that we are married,” smiles the director, who is currently writing a film based on Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai’s love story.

Huma Qureshi describes Tarla as a “delicious film.” The actor, who wrapped up the biopic on home-chef and cookbook author Tarla Dalal in June, believes it is an emotional story of a woman who “cooked her way out of the chaar diwari of her kitchen.” Becoming the famed home-chef for Piyush Gupta’s directorial venture, however, wasn’t easy.

Delhi-born Qureshi admits it was difficult to adopt the peculiar accent of her subject. “I grew up in a hardcore Punjabi neighbourhood. I can do any accent [prevalent] north of the Aravallis. But on this film, I had to learn from scratch. My diction coach Hetal Varia and I worked for months to make sure we don’t do a caricature. Tarla was a Gujarati woman who married and moved to Napean Sea Road, so her way of talking was unique.”

Varia, who previously served as a dialect coach on 'A Suitable Boy' (2020), says cracking Dalal’s diction required focusing on two areas. The first was the learning of a mechanical dialect to sound as close to her as possible. “We didn’t want to do mimicry of any sort and sound emotionally connected. The technique of the dialect can be taught but it needs to be adapted to the creativity of the actor. From day one, Huma brought to the table her understanding of who Tarla is. We started with basics like the connection between speech and body, how the body was involved in speech, how she would breathe while talking. Very quickly, we went into how she responds to things and how that seeped into the speech.

The next part was vocabulary building for the film. Varia explains, “We all know Tarla as a Gujarati. We know theoretically that she was born and brought up in Pune. Even now Pune speaks chaste Marathi. So back in the day, it was even more before. One day the director (Piyush Gupta), Huma and I were watching a video by Tarla. I was wondering why there is no Gujarati-twang in her and that’s when it struck me. I realised her Gujarati musicality is missing. Maybe her family spoke Gujarati at home, but there is a blend of Maharashtrian essence. It was a breakthrough for us, so we could design a border beyond which the diction would sound hammy. We wanted the blend of performance and dialect to be effortless. We designed a dialect to recreate what Tarla was like to suit the story.”

In the course of the film, the protagonist’s speech evolves in keeping with different stages of her life. After Dalal married into a south Bombay family, Varia says there was a noticeable shift in her accent. “Every human changes their way of speaking as they go along in life. She moved into South Bombay, her husband was from America. Her English is accented. Tarla’s speech evolved into more layers. We tried to maintain her sparkle and twinkle, which was crucial to who Tarla was."

Varia gives full marks to the lead actor for her prep and eagerness to learn. “To say extract Huma out and make her Tarla is not easy. We neutralised the Delhi-ness in her. For instance, words like khali, khamosh, lifafa we kept on the side. The good thing about Huma is that she picks up very fast. We worked seamlessly and we were ready to change with each other. She was very open to learning, and harped on scene improvisation even on set. She surrendered to the process. I would get very academic sometimes and she would ask me to send a recording. But I was adamant I wouldn’t send because she had to sound like herself and not like me. I like to know where the actor is naturally and not impose what I have designed. The whole fun of our work is to explore a character together. I feed off my actor's strengths and adapt to their voice and breathwork."

Food holds a special place in Huma Qureshi’s life. The actor’s family runs Saleem’s, a Mughlai restaurant chain in Delhi and Dubai. For the past six weeks, food has dominated her on-screen life too as she shot for Tarla, the biopic on the late Gujarati home chef, Tarla Dalal. Before Qureshi wrapped up the shoot late last week, Dalal’s children Renu and Sanjay Dalal visited the actor on the set in Mumbai.

The duo, having seen snatches of the Piyush Gupta-directed venture, were impressed by the actor’s rendition of the chef-cookbook author. Getting the nod of the Dalal kids was a big validation for Qureshi. She says, “The character has touched my soul deeply. The one thing I will remember the most from the shoot is when Tarla ji’s children, who are now grandparents themselves, visited me on the set. They got emotional on seeing [parts of the film], and complimented me for doing the role with conviction. It was a surreal moment.”

The biopic, backed by Ronnie Screwvala, Nitesh and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, will trace the journey of Dalal who started cooking classes from her home in 1966. When they became immensely popular, it led to her first cookbook, The Pleasures Of Vegetarian Cooking in 1974. Her cookbooks were a rage as she introduced various cuisines while adapting it for the Indian palate.

Qureshi, in the process of bringing this extraordinary journey on screen, has developed a close bond with Sanjay and Renu. She says that they have imbibed their late mother’s culinary skills. “They used to send food for me on the set. I must say their cheese platter was out of this world,” she laughs.

In the movie, Qureshi will be seen sporting buck teeth and glasses to resemble Tarla. She has watched hours of footage to pick up the famed cook’s accent and mannerisms. To the actor, capturing Tarla’s personality was of utmost importance. “As artistes, the endeavour is to capture the vibe and charisma of the person. Little nuances like how she conducted herself and how she spoke on camera had to be woven into the performance.”

In March, mid-day was the first to report that Huma Qureshi was gearing up to play celebrated chef-cookbook author Tarla Dalal in a biopic (Huma finds the perfect recipe for success, March 29). Over a month on, the actor has begun shooting for the Ronnie Screwvala, Nitesh and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari production. While the script and her personal research helped her familiarize with the late home chef’s rise to success, looking the part proved to be an uphill task.

With her tall frame, Qureshi’s physicality is nothing like Dalal’s. A source reveals, “Since Dalal had top-of-mind recall value among millions of Indian women, looking the part was key. Huma did multiple look tests, with director Piyush Gupta, to finally crack the avatar that sees her sporting glasses and buck teeth. Before the film went on floors about two weeks ago, the actor would wear the dentures for long hours to make sure she was comfortable with them. She knew that the camera would capture even the slightest hint of effort or discomfort. So, she used to wear them throughout the day, and practised speaking with them on.”

As part of her prep, Qureshi also devoured hours of footage, thus picking up on the cookbook author’s accent, pitch and mannerisms.

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.