103-item recipe book for Dilip Mehtas Cooking with Stella

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April 21, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): Dilip Mehta’s film Cooking With Stella featuring Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray, Sriya Saran and Canadian star Don McKellar has taken its culinary theme many steps ahead. The film’s team will now be putting together a book of 103 Indian recipes, one each for every member of the crew.

Director Dilip Mehta says, “It is true. But we are not doing just any ordinary cook book with Indian recipes. Our book would have 103 recipes. That’s the number of cast and crew who worked on the film, each individual’s favorite Indian dish! Don MeKellar and I have already cooked live on Canada AM, a hugely popular show broadcast across Canada. We prepared a recipe from the film.”

But Dilip warns that his film is not just about cooking. “Even though the film is titled Cooking With Stella it isn’t entirety about cooking. Cooking has been used as a metaphor for the shenanigans that go on in the protagonist Stella’s (Seema Biswas) kitchen. It is almost the subtext of the film. The upstairs-downstairs relationship, the disparity between the master and slave and cultural differences is the engine that drives the film. The film in many ways is a social satire and by entering the kitchen, the core of any home, I have attempted to hold a mirror up to ourselves.”

On April 11, the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi had an exclusive private screening of Cooking With Stella at the India Habitat Centre.

Says Dilip, “Not only were all the seats occupied, but people were seated on the floor in the aisles in the balcony and many were unable to be accommodated! It was a super screening with a smile on the faces of the audience who were laughing at all the key moments. There were so many diplomats and expatriates at the screening who felt that the movie charmingly resonated with the reality of the master-servant relationship and the Indian housewives at the screening, who have an ongoing preoccupation with ‘GOD alone knows what our domestic staff is up to when our backs are turned’, had a good laugh at their predicament. Fortunately the comedic line did not bury the irony and the satirical element that forms the actual narrative thread of the film. One of course discounts the compliments of family and friends but after the screening I was literally mobbed by strangers who were so taken in by what they called a charming, witty and subversive film.”

Dilip leaves on April 19 for Los Angeles. “Cooking With Stella is the opening night Gala presentation of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), perhaps the most prestigious Indian Diaspora festival outside of India. Lisa Ray will be joining me at the red carpet. What fun! Our little film has nudged out some really big Indian films.”

– Subhash K Jha / Sampurn Wire