In the final ceremony, when she took these vows, she chose her name as “Tilo”, apparently after the spice ‘sesame’, but secretly, in her heart, she was naming herself after the most beautiful of the heavenly beauties: Tilottama. She was to give up the world and love none other than the spices, never set a foot outside the place where she lived with the spices and never use the spices for her own self. It was here that she met “The Mother” and started learning from her about the spices and their magic.īut every power has to be paid for and the price for this was to become “The Mistress of Spices”. After a few years, she escaped from their boat and with the help of sea-serpents reached to “The Island”. The news spread and bandits came to her house, killed her family and kidnapped her to become their “treasure finder”. The fact is that Tilo’s magic lies in knowledge of spices, in being well-versed with the effect of each of the numerous spices that she houses in her store and her ability to use these spices to do her bidding.īorn as unusual girl in a remote village of a faraway land, she had a knack for finding things that were hidden to the eyes of other humans. It is rumored amongst her customers that she has magical powers and can provide solutions for their problems.

Tilo, an elderly Indian lady in appearance, runs a departmental store in San Francisco. Boookīlack Swan (1998), Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (02/1998) and others It reminds us that magical powers come with regulations as to their usage and the violation of these rules might result into disasters. “The Mistress of Spices” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one more story that belongs to genre portraying the eternal struggle of a human mind to balance between individual desires and common good.

The mistress of spices novel