Tarla (2023) Movie Drinking Game
Down a Green Juice Shot: each time Tarla falters and Nalin swoops in to salvage her efforts like a typical emotional support human.
Down a Green Juice Shot: each time a character casually drops ‘culinary metaphors’ during a conversation.
Raise a Toast: to every big and small win during Tarla’s journey from homemaker to bread-earner.
By: Vidal D’costa (Two Beers) –
Set in the 1960s, when Indian women were practically pressured by their family to fit into the mould of an ideal housewife whose ‘goals’ were limited to packing lunches for the sole breadwinner of the household (their husbands) with no middle ground for financial independence whatsoever, Tarla is the true and inspiring story behind the legendary Tarla Dalal, a ‘typical wife and mum’, whose home-cooked meals made her a household staple and a culinary visionary.
A Toast
The screenplay bubbles over with simplicity and a whole lot of familiarity as well as endearing charm to boot, with writers Piyush Gupta and Gautam Ved definitely leaving a lasting impression with the final feast- a movie that radiates a pleasant energy and which covers all the bases with the same easy to follow methodology as Tarla’s own recipes. Ranging from its titular character’s captivation with leaving a mark ever since her starry-eyed young undergrad days in a college where male students outnumbered the female students (even if she doesn’t exactly know how exactly to go about achieving the same), to her post-marital rise as an author and recipe developer, especially in an era when this job designation hardly existed and when cookbooks or even cooking shows weren’t commonplace in India.
The movie is also not just a ‘Tarla story’ (even if the voiceover in its opening scene begs to differ), but also wins audiences over by devoting equal screentime to the supportive man behind this successful woman- Tarla’s upstanding husband and engineer-turned-publisher Nalin Dalal, whose quality check skills could make even Anton Ego from Ratatouille come across as a milquetoast food critic in comparison! The movie also addresses the power couple’s shortcomings, and the emerging conflict as their power dynamics gradually shift, and as jealousy occasionally overpowers their selflessness (after all, much like a roti/Indian flatbread, one can’t expect a human being, too, to be perfectly well-rounded). The visual storytelling cleverly encapsulates this very theme, particularly the imagery of Nalin acknowledging his thinly veiled insecurities in the climax by lending Tarla a helping hand with the laundry, thus quite literally lessening her load and simultaneously sharing it to achieve a balance.
Tarla is also no ordinary biopic and serves as a guide of sorts on the secret of becoming an earning woman in a male-dominated world- an instance of which is portrayed through organic exchanges such as Tarla opting for a male co-host to star alongside her in her cooking show in order to stir up a discourse among audiences who deem cooking as just a stereotypical girly job, and also to reclaim it as an inclusive art that can further be utilised to motivate and break more such regressive moulds.
The movie also involves its minor characters in this process- from Tarla’s domestic help, who lends a helping hand to her employer in adding a vegan twist to the ‘Murgh Musallam’ (chicken curry) recipe, or the neighborhood scrap dealer who offers to act as the middle man for Tarla’s first ever self-published cookbook to reach an audience, thus gaining her first ever fanbase. The dialogues must also be commended, as the organic interactions between Tarla and her female students also excel at conveying a powerful message of how various feministic ideologies and the personal lived experiences of both the traditional and modern working woman can serve a purpose and coexist rather than be pitted against each other, thus equally emboldening women to build an empire while also inviting men to take up their own initiative to bring a progressive change in mindset.
The comedic interludes and light-hearted gags interspersed with its more serious life lessons, such as the strictly vegetarian Tarla chancing upon Nalin indulging in his occasional carnivorous side and taking him to task in a rather melodramatic fashion, are side-splitting and over the top with cheese to spare, yet also delightfully self-aware.
The final garnish and Tarla’s driving force are its two confident leads- with Huma Qureshi serving up ‘Vidya Balan vibes’ with her delectably cute mannerisms as she dons the apron of Tarla Dalal. Her costar Sharib Hashmi, who won hearts as JK in the popular web series Family Man, deserves his flowers too (and maybe even an all you can eat buffet) just for bringing his quintessential Golden Retriever self to the table in the role of Nalin. Qureshi and Hashmi’s chemistry and natural repartee is also complicit in ensuring that the audience continually roots for this saccharine onscreen couple who undergo trial and error at certain points in an otherwise enriching marriage, yet who stick through thick and thin even as the relationship occasionally threatens to sour or curdle due to diverging professional ambitions.
Beer Two
The pacing of the first half can feel a tad too swift and a few scenes could have been allowed to simmer more, but this can be overlooked as the movie steadies itself soon enough and shapes up once it finds the right mixie setting.
Verdict
Just like the late Tarla Dalal’s cooking show, which left gleeful viewers glued to their telly screens and drooling over the savoury and sweet delicacies plated up onscreen back when it debuted, this feel-good film adaptation, too, proves to be a nostalgic delight. And yes, non veg enthusiasts can partake of it, sans judgement too!
