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Book Reviews
10 Years of "The Mistress of Spices"
Of Spices and Magical
Realism
Review by
Rajgopal Nidamboor
The
Mistress of Spices was Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s debut novel.
 A
sprightly work, first published ten years ago, the novel not only brings
home the truth of magical realism a la Marquez and Salman
Rushdie, but also the peerless power of spices — a realm endowed with
the power to inflame our senses, and even ignite our imagination.
The impressive book also contains an enormous degree of suffering which
comes as no surprise, since the problems it vivifies of Asian immigrants
in the US, where the story is set, are nothing but a continuing reality.
Besides, the book is replete with earthy wisdom, where the East and West
ram into each other. Also, it is armed with a unique style, and pattern,
that comes naturally to Divakaruni. In the process, she conjures up a
vitality of language, which is, at once, classical, vivid, perceptive,
and consciously expanding.
A bit about Divakaruni. Divakaruni teaches creative writing in the US.
That is, if she doesn’t function as a motivator for a help line for
South Asian women. Author of several volumes of poetry, and a
critically-acclaimed collection of short stories — Arranged Marriage
— which won three literary awards, including an American Book Award,
Divakaruni lives near San Francisco with her husband and two children.
Back to the book, in question. Indian immigrant Tilo runs a spice shop
in Oakland, California. She not only supplies ingredients for a host of
uses, but also helps customers in every way possible. When local Indian
expatriates visit her shop, Tilo is at her best: dispensing wisdom. She
is too courteous, cadgy, and warm, with her Western customers, giving
them the appropriate spice they need. She sells coriander for better
eyesight, turmeric to erase wrinkles, chilies for cleansing of evil
spirits… and, she knows them all, quite well. Some of them like the palm
of her hand. Reason? Simple: Tilo is a Mistress of Spices; and, a
priestess of their secrets themselves.
The best part. In the course of her classy narration, Divakaruni webs
stories of her heroines — most of them young women on the threshold of
experience, who are often disillusioned by the American dream itself.
They have come from Indian villages, and cities, and have moved from
excitement and challenge towards uncertainty, fear, and so on, in the
Land of Gold. This is Divakaruni’s raison d’etre: the Golden Land
is generally not what it is ought, or thought, to be. It is apparent
that Divakaruni’s characters are not just imaginative entities: much of
her heroines are character-based. Some of them have been derived from
old myths and tales, more so, Tilo, who dispenses love — the ultimate
willingness to giving happiness to others.
Divakaruni’s characters are — as you’d guess — battered women: women,
whose dreams have crashed but whose spirit remains undiminished in the
wake of adversity. There is one girl who comes to America, only to find
that her husband runs a small store. Worse still, one night when her
husband is found shot dead, she becomes desolate, shattered. Yet, she
makes up her mind to stay on, and not to return to her motherland, and
to her in-laws.
Not that Divakaruni’s women are always as solid as a rock in pathos.
They are sometimes fragile, depressingly vulnerable and sensitive. And,
troubled too. Even Tilo is not free from that conundrum. Picture this:
when a lonely American comes to Tilo’s store, she doesn’t find the right
spice for her customer because he arouses in her a forbidden desire.
There lies another paradox: if Tilo allows her heart to rule her mind
and desires, she will destroy her magical powers too!
But, Tilo knows the danger she is in. She can always sense it. Hence,
she tells Raven, who wants to escape with her to an earthly Paradise:
Our
love would never have lasted, for it was based upon fantasy, your
and mine, of what it is to be Indian. To be American… There is no
earthly Paradise. Except what we can make back there, in the soot,
in the rubble, in the crisped-away flesh. In the guns and needles,
the white drug-dust, the young men and women lying down to dreams of
wealth and power and wailing in cells. Yes, in the hate, in the
fear.
Tilo is too
resolute vis-ŕ-vis the law of the Old One, who has bestowed her with
enormous power, the essence of the spices, and compassion. She dares to
reach out to Raven, all right, and that “impossible” love: yet, she
suppresses her desire, even when Raven rescues her from a devastating
earthquake. There hangs a tale.
Divakaruni’s book sure evolves by way of a crisp storyline, and
chapters, appropriately named after spices — from Tilo, the essence of “til,”
Turmeric, Cinnamon, Fenugreek, and Ginger, to Sesame.
Full of pungent alchemy, allegory, lyrical tastes, verve, hot passions,
and tinged with a delicate sense of humor, Divakaruni’s novel examines,
with both dexterity and surgical precision, the universal mysteries of
the human heart.
More than anything else, and in more ways than one, The Mistress of
Spices is also an exquisite assay — an excellent scrutiny, with
which most of us could easily empathize.
Of the way Indian women are caught in the vortex of a major paradigm
shift, or transformation.
April 9, 2006
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Book Reviews
The Week of April 9, 2006
United States Congress at Critical Crossroads
with India Dr. Subhash Kapila
Nuclear
Deal Hurdles : It's The Politics, Stupid! by Rajinder Puri
Bangladesh's Foreign Policy Approaches to India
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
US Market Horizon and Gathering Storm Clouds by
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Indian Federalism in Troubled Waters by
Prasenjit Maiti
Jail Di Galli Vich No
Entry by Usha Kakkar
Caste Wars II by Usha Kakkar
Democracy Dying by J. Ajithkumar
The Zero That Was India by Kamesh
Ramakrishna Aiyer
Answer to Puzzlement
About Zero by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Of Spices and Magical Realism by Rajgopal
Nidamboor
Post Colonial India and its Architecture -
III by Ashish Nangia
Ancient Mangroves in the Womb of the Present
by V.K. Joshi
Celebrating Culture by Neha Girotra
Sharing and Young Children by Garima Gupta
The Poetry in the Moors by Dr. Amitabh
Mitra
Ain't No Cure For Love by Vinay Chandran
The 'Feminization' of Menswear by MH Ahsan
Liberating the Nuns by Mehru Jaffer
Smart Streets, Shattered Lives by Nitin Jugran
Bahuguna
Keeping India's Hands Clean by Kaushiki Rao
Power Trip : Bollywood Masala by MH Ahsan
New Generation Sisterhood by Neena Bhandari
Apa's Survival Mantra : A Profile of Angela Gomes
Router : An Introduction by Ruchi
Gupta
Lakhnawi Itar by Rajsaran Varma
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