Huma Qureshi doesn't let grass grow under her feet. Even as she celebrated the writing of a superheroine novel, and the third season of her iconic SonyLIV series Maharani, she is off shooting the second season of Mithya, where she plays a teacher in a boarding school. Ever since she first appeared on the screen in Gangs of Wasseypur in 2012, Qureshi has made her place in the tough and exacting world of Mumbai cinema. She's had her struggles with weight, with being an outsider, with not settling for just any role, and has emerged with a body of work in cinema and streaming she can be proud of. Zeba: An Accidental Superhero, her first work of fiction, is just like her. Unique and individualistic, about a spoilt rich brat who grows up in New York but belongs to an ancient land, Khudir, with traditional mores where women are no more than eye candy for private pleasure. Zeba, her heroine with an unusual superpower, is here to show men their place. This of course, is in a story that is in keeping with the unspoken ethos of much of Qureshi's work—showing young women of her faith that modernity is possible without completely sacrificing tradition. "I allowed the book to write itself," says Qureshi, who says she dislikes a world with cookie cutter characters. "The real world has complex issues and even good people have grey edges. And every truth has an equal and opposite falsehood," she adds. Her superhero wears a hijab and a cape, and is set in the two decades between 1980 and 2000s. "That was when I was growing up, I was watching the news, and my world view was forming," she says. "I don't know all the answers to the burning questions of the day. But civil liberties, education and healthcare are the bare minimum we can agree we all need. And yet these basics are not provided to a lot of people." Qureshi, who studied History Honours at Gargi College at Delhi University, is a reader and brings her fierce intelligence and devouring of books such as Ruby Lal's Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan to reimagine the harem in Zeba as not merely a place of intrigue as male historians did but as the site for power moves. Originally a 10-page pitch for the TV show, Zeba grew as she wrote pages and pages during the Covid lockdowns. Zeba also features an actor with a rather well developed libido, called RK aka My Bollywood Hottie. "My words and my craft are my legacy," she says. "And I want to have the courage to be joyful."

Nisha Pahuja

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