A book that barely needs introduction, The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee is one of the more popular works of contemporary fiction to have emerged out of India, largely due to its adaptation into the critically popular movie starring Aishwarya Rai.
The Mistress of Spices is not a story about myth and magic, and all that is romantic, as the cover says. From what I perceive, it is a book about the ageless conflict between what one must, and what one wants, duty vs desires. It is also a story of battered egos and hurt pride. The story narrates the life and love of Tilo, a girl, a priestess who has been trained in the art of spices, learned of the magical powers that spices and their blends contain. Tilo is a mistress of spices, commanded to run a spice shop in Oakland, California, after completion of her training. As a mistress of spices, she can bend the spices to her will. As a mistress of spices also, she is bound by the rules laid down by the First Mother, that she cannot touch another and cannot step out of the store. In the store she meets many people, and cannot help being drawn into their lives. In particular, she is intrigued by one….and that one changes her life.
The story has some degree of predictability, that of forbidden love set against a backdrop of the quintessential magic and mystique that is globally associated with anything Indian. Where Divakaruni scores is converting this timeless formula into a tale of misplaced power, of love and desire amidst the call of duty, and most importantly a journey of realizing the source of true power. While the book starts out with Tilo’s presumption of the loyalty of the spices towards her…”…the spices are my love….they bow to my command. At a whisper they yield up to me their hidden properties, their magic powers.” and her confidence in her own magical powers; the power shifts almost undetectably as the story proceeds. In the end she admits that the power source are the spices, not her….”in that silence I see the spices’ punishment. They have left me here, alone and reft of magic….” Without the spices, she is just another mortal…
There are quite a few question marks the reader is left with. How old is Tilo really? Some parts describe her as having served people for many years, yet at beginning the author mentions that the store is just a year old. Also, how does the author explain the fact that the very spices and Mother and serpents that Tilo is afraid of after her transgressions, have nothing to say, as she walks off into the sunset (or sunrise in this case) with the “love of her life” and under a new name?
If you like a sense of mystique and magic in the books you read, this book is for you. Do not look for logic. It offers some food for thought about human nature and psychology, and a lot of scope for fantasies.
Here is the trailer of the movie “The Mistress of Spices” based on this book:
Our Rating: 3.8/5
GoodReads rating: 3.5/5.0
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