A friend lent me this book sometime back with, “Padh ke dekh, it’s a nice read.”
I had never read this author before and was pleased to find that her writing style was unique. I always seem to find time out of all kinds of busy schedules for books- and have rarely had a chance to regret it- simply love reading.
The book started off slowly but there was a certain mysterious tone to it which led me on. The Mistress of Spices has some Bangla words in it and the heroine’s name Tilottma is also a typically, old-worldly Bengali name and that Bong connection urged me to read on. After I finished the book I was amazed at Chitra Banerjee’s story telling abilities. She almost made me believe everything she had written about the spices. In fact, I think some of all that she mentions about the spices and their properties, is quite true. The book takes you into it’s very own magical world, where even dreams are more real than reality itself.
The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an alluring account of how Tilo, the protagonist, is torn between choosing a life of special powers and one of a simple, regular life of passionate love. I felt that Tilo’s choice was rather predictable, but the way it is arrived at in the book, is not.
This modern day fairy tale takes the help of prose as well as poetry, to weave its magic and revolves around Tilottma/ Tilo, who belongs to an enchanting, timeless world of myth and magic.
Tilo, has a very ethereal and mystical quality about her, she is ‘chosen’ and taught the ancient secret art to talk to, take help from spices in order to help solve various problems of humankind. Mistresses of Spices are able to see the fortunes of people with the help of spices and can with their help, better the lives of her customers.
After her tough training, Tilo is posted at a store in California, as the proprietress. Her mentor warns her of dire consequences, if she does not follow all the rules in order to be a Mistress of Spices.
Tilo, like many other Mistresses all over the world, is instructed to never leave the store she is posted at, never touch the people she meets, never look at a mirror and always refrain from using the spices for her own good. She, however, ends up breaking all the rules when she meets, ‘Her American’.
Her customers are mostly Asians and she has a spice ready for all of their problems. A spice that can spruce up their existing lives and help bring harmony and peace. Every one of her clients has their own little story.
Like Mistresses are supposed to be, Tilo is also trapped inside the cocoon of an old ugly body. Her American, however, ‘sees’ her and they both eventually fall in ‘forbidden’ love. T
Tilo’s world goes haywire, the spices warn her and wreck havoc but she’s a woman in love and ready to risk a lot. Her clients are affected by every step she takes towards her American.
The story is about how she deals with her rising desires, hopes and expectations. Does she survive the wrath of the spices? Is she able to unite with ‘Her American?’ Do the spices forgive her? Venture into the magical, poetic world of Tilottma to find out.
Excerpt:
I am a Mistress of Spices.
I can work the others too. Mineral, metal, earth and sand and stone. The gems with their cold clear light. The liquids that burn their hues into your eyes till you see nothing else. I learned them all on the island.
But the spices are my love.
I know their origins, and what their colors signify, and their smells. I 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. Their heat runs in my blood. From amchur to zafran, they bow to my command. At 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? Ah. You have forgotten the old secrets your mother’s mothers knew. Here is one of them again: Vanilla beans soaked soft in goat’s milk and rubbed on the wristbone can guard against the evil eye. And 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. Sunset skies brilliant as blood.
They are the ones I work with.