Tarla Dalal was an inspiring chef turned food writer in India at the time culinary expertise was considered merely a gateway to a successful marriage. She popularised cooking as an art across Indian households through her cookery books and TV shows. Padma Shri winner Tarla died in 2013. How big would be your expectations when a biopic of Tarla comes out with Huma Qureshi in the lead role? Reality sucks. Tarla was a totally disappointing watch. Director Piyush Gupta made it bland and uninspiring. It was like a scene-after-scene presentation of a numb script.

Tarla was someone who wanted to do something in her life right from her college days. Though she was vocal about it to her parents, it didn’t block her from getting married. She moves to Mumbai with her husband Nalin Kumar (Sharib Hashmi). And the couple supported each other in real life but the reel life felt so wooden. Huma and Sharib are good actors, but the episodic nature of the scenes bore us. Tarla’s life doesn’t take off for the next 11 years as she was busy with her three kids and husband-natural. The only metaphor the film holds is her blank gaze through the kitchen window and Tarla uses it as a feminist expression to the students in her cooking class she started after some years inspired by the importance of round rotis in a girl’s marriage. Mothers in her locality had a list of dishes their daughters should learn before shaadi. Tarla’s later celebrity cook status was indebted to them.

Tarla never tries to identify and explore the curious and hardworking person inside a typical housewife who invented almost 17,000 vegetarian recipes herself including the magical fusion of veg dishes tasted like non-veg cuisine. The feminism and patriarchy props placed in Tarla are too shallow. Nalin’s confession to his professionally growing wife was so melodramatic. Tarla should have been spiced with delicious recipes, but mostly we see the regular cooking for her family. Batata Musallam trials go tasteless through dull shots. Time is stuck in the film. Huma’s costume and dentures didn’t help her to resemble Tarla. Indeed, a miscast.