Cooking with Stella

Part of the Canadian diplomatic corps, Maya Chopra accepts as her next assignment what is considered the hardship posting at the Canadian High Commission in New Dehli, she ethnically half-South Asian herself. She, her chef husband Michael Laffont and their infant daughter Zara will live at the High Commission compound, with Michael to be the stay-at-home dad while he hopes to hone his palate and learn how to cook authentic South Asian cuisine in the process. In the role of their housekeeper and cook, they are assigned a thirty year veteran of such postings for the High Commission, a poor fifty-something South Asian woman named Stella Elizabeth Matthews. As is the Canadian way, Michael, who will deal with Stella more than Maya in being the stay-at-home dad, wants to treat Stella like one of the family. A devout Catholic, Stella continually prays to God for an early retirement fund in being able to buy a house in the country. What the High Commission and her previous direct employees don't and didn't know is that Stella, to achieve that fund, has routinely stole from them, whether it be directly in the form of jewelry, small electronics, or duty free Canadian goods (including alcohol) purchased from the High Commission commissary, which she either resells or uses as payment for other goods, or in the form of kickbacks with merchants who end up charging higher prices, but which Stella always passes off to her unsuspecting employers as a good deal. Stella continuing this scheme with Michael and Maya may be affected by two items. First, Michael, after tasting her cooking, asks her to be his cooking guru in a special teacher/student relationship. And second, Michael, in wanting to focus more time on the cooking, hires a nanny for Zara, a young innocent woman named Tannu, who is unwise to the ways of the big city as a new arrival from the country, she whose obligation is to send money home.