The Mistress of Spices

On a mythic island of women "where on our skin, the warm rain fell like pomegranate seeds" powerful spices like cinnamon, turmeric, and fenugreek whisper their secrets to young acolytes. Ordained after trial by fire, each new spice mistress is sent to a far-off land to cure the life pains of all Indian seekers, while keeping a cool distance from the mortals. Only stubborn, passionate Tilo, disguised as an old woman merchant in present-day Oakland, California, fails to heed the vengeful spices' warnings. Fragrant with spice and sensuality, this winning tale rolls off the tongue. Written in the soaring, poetic tradition of China Men and Haroun and the Sea of Stories . From Booklist Daivakaruni's debut story collection, Arranged Marriages (1995), inspired high praise, and her first novel, which uses romance as a conduit to explore more serious matters of the soul, will win her even greater acclaim. Mythical and mystical, Mistress of Spices is reminiscent of fables and fairy tales. It revolves around the age-old magic of spices, which are imbued with powers as complexly spiritual as India itself, the birthplace of Divakaruni and her fearless heroine, Tilo. Clairvoyant from birth, Tilo eagerly learns the secrets of spices and becomes, in essence, a nun, wedded to these miraculous substances and devoted to the art of healing. She works her gentle magic in a tiny, rundown shop in Oakland, California, hidden within the body of an old woman. The spices are harsh taskmasters, and Tilo's life is limited until her rebelliousness reasserts itself, and she becomes involved in the lives of her troubled customers. She falls in love with Raven, the quintessential romantic hero--dashing, handsome, rich, and brooding--but Raven actually embodies nothing less than the great spirit of the American Indian. As the wild story of their unlikely ardor unfolds, Divakaruni draws evocative parallels between the racism and violence immigrants from India face in the U.S. and the tragic conquest of Native Americans. The story Divakaruni tells is transporting, but it is her gift for metaphor that makes this novel live and breathe, its pages as redolent as any freshly ground spice. Donna Seaman From Kirkus Reviews The author of the promising story collection Arranged Marriage (1995) employs magical realism to delve back into the lives of Indian immigrants--all of whom, in this case, consult an ancient shamanic spice-vendor in their efforts to improve their lives. Born ugly and unwanted in a tiny village in India, Nayan Tara (``Flower That Grows by the Dust Road'') is virtually discarded by her family for the sin of being a girl. Resentful at being treated so shabbily, young Nayan Tara throws herself on the mercy of the mythical serpents of the oceans, who deliver her to the mystical Island of Spices. There, she is initiated into a priestly sisterhood of Spice Mistresses sent out into the world to help others, offering magic potions of fennel, peppercorn, lotus root, etc. The place where Nayan Tara (now renamed Tilottama, or Tilo) eventually lands happens to be the Spice Bazaar in a rough section of Oakland, California--a tiny, rundown shop from which the now- aged Tilo is forbidden to venture. Here, she devotes herself to improving the lives of the immigrant Indians who come to buy her spices--including an abused wife, a troubled youth, a chauffeur with dreams of American wealth, and a grandfather whose insistence on Old World propriety may have cost him his relationship with a beloved granddaughter. As long as Tilo follows the dictates of her ancient island-bound spice mentor, particularly thinking only of her charges' needs and never of her own, Tilo feels in sync with the spice spirits and with the world at large. Her longing for love tempts her to stray, however, when a mysterious American arrives in her shop. A sometimes clumsy, intermittently enchanting tale of love and loss in immigrant America. Still, the unique insights into the struggles of Indian-Americans to transcend the gulf between East and West make trudging through some rather plain prose worthwhile. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "An unusual, clever, and often exquisite first novel...The result is rather as if Isabel Allende met Laura Esquivel." --Los Angeles Times "Divakaruni's prose is so pungent that it stains the page, yet beneath the sighs and smells of this brand of magic realism she deftly introduces her true theme: how an ability to accommodate desire enlivens not only the individual heart but a society cornered by change." --The New Yorker " The Mistress of Spices is a dazzling tale of misbegotten dreams and desires, hopes and expectations, woven with poetry and storyteller magic." --Amy Tan"A splendid novel, beautifully conceived and crafted."--Pat Conroy From the Trade Paperback edition. From the Publisher A first novel by the author of the short story collection, Arranged Marriage , The Mistress of Spices is a mystical tale told by Tilo, a young Indian woman in an old woman's body who has been trained in the secret powers of spices. Her special knowledge leads her to Oakland, California where she uses it to help the local Indian community by opening a spice shop from which she administers spices as curatives. Tilo can see into people's hearts and minds but it is a mistress's duty to keep herself at a distance, "not too far nor too near, in calm kindness poised." However, Tilo is unable to obey her charge, and she becomes emotionally involved with her customers as they struggle with the demands of their families, the clash of the old way versus the American way, racism, abusive husbands-all of the complexities of living in the modern world. It is also her duty to limit her involvement to the Indian community. But Tilo finds herself mysteriously drawn to an American man named Raven, whose innermost thoughts she cannot read. Her complex and passionate relationships with her customers and Raven are in violation of her spice mistress vows, and so she finds herself forced to choose between the magical of an immortal and the vicissitudes of life in the real world. Vibrant, vivacious, headstrong and daring, Tilo is unforgettable and so is her story." From the Inside Flap l by the author of the short story collection, Arranged Marriage , The Mistress of Spices is a mystical tale told by Tilo, a young Indian woman in an old woman's body who has been trained in the secret powers of spices. Her special knowledge leads her to Oakland, California where she uses it to help the local Indian community by opening a spice shop from which she administers spices as curatives. Tilo can see into people's hearts and minds but it is a mistress's duty to keep herself at a distance, "not too far nor too near, in calm kindness poised." However, Tilo is unable to obey her charge, and she becomes emotionally involved with her customers as they struggle with the demands of their families, the clash of the old way versus the American way, racism, abusive husbands-all of the complexities of living in the modern world. It is also her duty to limit her involvement to the Indian community. But Tilo finds herself mysteriously drawn to an American m Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the bestselling author of the novels Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices ; the story collections The Unknown Errors of Our Lives and Arranged Marriage , which received several awards, including the American Book Award; and four collections of prize-winning poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., Zoetrope, Good Housekeeping, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Best American Short Stories 1999, and The New York Times. Born in India, Divakaruni lives near Houston.For further information about Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, visit her Web site at www.chitradivakaruni.com. From the Trade Paperback edition. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I am a Mistress of Spices. I can work the others too.xa0xa0Mineral, metal, earth and sand and stone.xa0xa0The gems with their cold clear light.xa0xa0The liquids that burn their hues into your eyes till you see nothing else.xa0xa0I learned them all on the island. But the spices are my love. I know their origins, and what their colors signify, and their smells.xa0xa0I can call each by the true-name it was given at the first, when earth split like skin and offered it up to the sky.xa0xa0Their heat runs in my blood.xa0xa0From amchur to zafran, they bow to my command.xa0xa0At a whisper they yield up to me their hidden properties, their magic powers. Yes, they all hold magic, even the everyday American spices you toss unthinking into your cooking pot. You doubt?xa0xa0Ah.xa0xa0You have forgotten the old secrets your mother's mothers knew.xa0xa0Here is one of them again: Vanilla beans soaked soft in goat's milk and rubbed on the wristbone can guard against the evil eye.xa0xa0And here another: A measure of pepper at the foot of the bed, shaped into a crescent, cures you of nightmare. But the spices of true power are from my birthland, land of ardent poetry, aquamarine feathers.xa0xa0Sunset skies brilliant as blood. They are the ones I work with. If you stand in the center of this room and turn slowly around, you will be looking at every Indian spice that ever was--even the lost ones--gathered here upon the shelves of my store. I think I do not exaggerate when I say there is no other place in the world quite like this.xa0xa0 The store has been here only for a year.xa0xa0But already many look at it and think it was always. I can understand why.xa0xa0Turn the crooked corner of Esperanza where the Oakland buses hiss to a stop and you'll see it.xa0xa0Perfect-fitted between the narrow barred door of Rosa's Weekly Hotel, still blackened from a year-ago fire, and Lee Ying's Sewing Machine and Vacuum Cleaner Repair, with the glass cracked between the R and the e. Grease-smudged window.xa0xa0Looped letters that say spice bazaar faded into a dried-mud brown.xa0xa0Inside, walls veined with cobwebs where hang discolored pictures of the gods, their sad shadow eyes.xa0xa0Metal bins with the shine long gone from them, heaped with atta and Basmati rice and masoor dal. Row upon row of videomovies, all the way back to the time of black-and-white.xa0xa0Bolts of fabric dyed in age-old colors, New Year yellow, harvest green, bride's luck red. And in the corners accumulated among dustballs, exhaled by those who have entered here, the desires.xa0xa0Of all things in my store, they are the most ancient.xa0xa0For even here in this new land America, this city which prides itself on being no older than a heartbeat, it is the same things we want, again and again. I too am a reason why.xa0xa0I too look like I have been here forever.xa0xa0This isxa0xa0what the customers see as they enter, ducking under plastic-green mango leaves strung over the door for luck: a bent woman with skin the color of old sand, behind a glass counter that holds mithai, sweets out of theirxa0xa0childhoods.xa0xa0Out of their mothers' kitchens.xa0xa0Emerald-green burfis, rasogollahs white as dawn and, made from lentil flour, laddus like nuggets of gold.xa0xa0It seems right that I should have beenxa0xa0here always, that I should understand without words their longing for the ways they chose to leave behind when they chose America.xa0xa0Their shame for thatxa0xa0longing, like the bitter-slight aftertaste in the mouth when one has chewed amlaki to freshen the breath. They do not know, of course.xa0xa0That I am not old, that this seeming-body I took on in Shampati's fire when I vowed to become a Mistress is not mine.xa0xa0I claim its creases and gnarls no more than water claims the ripples that wrinkle it.xa0xa0They do not see, under the hooded lids, the eyes which shine for a moment--I need no forbidden mirror (for mirrors are forbidden to Mistresses) to tell me this--like dark fire.xa0xa0The eyes which alone are my own. No.xa0xa0One more thing is mine.xa0xa0My name which is Tilo, short for Tilottama, for I am named after the sun-burnished sesame seed, spice of nourishment.xa0xa0They do not know this, my customers, nor that earlier I had other names.Sometimes it fills me with a heaviness, lake of black ice, when I think that across the entire length of this land not one person knows who I am. Then I tell myself, No matter.xa0xa0It is better this way. "Remember," said the Old One, the First Mother, when she trained us on the island.xa0xa0"You are not important.xa0xa0No Mistress is.xa0xa0What is important is the store.xa0xa0And the spices." The store.xa0xa0Even for those who know nothing of the inner room with its sacred, secret shelves, the store is an excursion into the land of might-have-been.xa0xa0A self-indulgence dangerous for a brown people who come from elsewhere, to whom real Americans might say Why? Ah, the pull of that danger. They love me because they sense I understand this.xa0xa0They hate me a little for it too. And then, the questions I ask.xa0xa0To the plump woman dressed in polyester pants and a Safeway tunic, her hair coiled in a tight bun as she bends over a small hill of green chilies searching earnestly: "Has your husband found another job since the layoff." To the young woman who hurries in with a baby on her hip to pick up some dhania jeera powder: "The bleeding, is it bad still, do you want something for it." I can see the electric jolt of it go through each one's body, the same every time.xa0xa0Almost I would laugh if the pity of it did not tug at me so.xa0xa0Each face startling up as though I had put my hands on the delicate oval of jaw and cheekbone and turned it toward me.xa0xa0Though of course I did not.xa0xa0It is not allowed for Mistresses to touch those who come to us.xa0xa0To upset the delicate axis of giving and receiving on which our lives are held precarious. For a moment I hold their glance, and the air around us grows still and heavy.xa0xa0A few chilies drop to the floor, scattering like hard green rain.xa0xa0The child twists in her mother's tightened grip, whimpering. Their glance skittery with fear with wanting. Witchwoman, say the eyes.xa0xa0Under their lowered lids they remember the stories whispered around night fires in their home villages. "That's all for today," one woman tells me, wiping her hands on nubby polyester thighs, sliding a package of chilies at me. "Shhh baby little rani," croons the other, busies herself with the child's tangled curls until I have rung up her purchases. They keep their cautious faces turned away as they leave. But they will come back later.xa0xa0After darkness.xa0xa0They will knock on the shut door of the store that smells of their desires and ask. I will take them into the inner room, the one with no windows, where I keep the purest spices, the ones I gathered on the island for times of special need.xa0xa0I will light the candle I keep ready and search the soot-streaked dimness for lotus root and powdered methi, paste of fennel and sun-roasted asafetida.xa0xa0I will chant.xa0xa0I will administer.xa0xa0I will pray to remove sadness and suffering as the Old One taught.xa0xa0I will deliver warning. This is why I left the island where each day still is melted sugar and cinnamon, and birds with diamond throats sing, and silence when it falls is light as mountain mist. Left it for this store, where I have brought together everything you need in order to be happy. From the Trade Paperback edition. Read more