This post is reference by Dr D. B Gavani. Immigrant Indian Writers. Ravi Prakashan, Gadag, 2011.
I. Introduction: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet and teacher. Her work has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her books have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew and Japanese. Much of Divakaruni’s works deal with the immigrant experience, an important theme in the mosaic of American society. Her book Arranged Marriage, winner of an American Book Award, is a collection of short stories about women from India caught between two worlds. In The Mistress of Spices, named one of the best books of the 20th Century by the San Francisco Chronicle, the heroine Tilo provides spices, not only for cooking, but also for the homesickness and alienation that the Indian immigrants in her shop experience. In Sister of My Heart, two cousins—one in America, the other in India, share details of their lives with each other and help each other solve problems that threaten their marriages. In One Amazing Thing, a group of strangers of varied backgrounds, trapped by an earthquake in an Indian visa office, discover
what they have in common as they struggle to save themselves. Divakaruni writes to unite people. Her aims are to destroy myths and stereotypes. She hopes through her writing to dissolve boundaries between people of different backgrounds, communities and ages. II. Plot : Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni presents multiple consciousnesses as an identity that is in between such oppositional states, characterized by being neither rather than both. In The Mistress of Spices, the process of self-perception is the foundation of identity formation for the central character Tilotamma (Tilo). As Tilo strives to define herself as South Asian and American, she develops multiple consciousnesses that manifest themselves in both her experiences and her subsequent relationships with her racial and sexual identities. While Tilo is living in America, she is incapable of pure self-perception, and can only see herself through the eyes of those around her, leaving her own self-seeing as a secondary and almost marginal perspective. Tilo views herself through the lens of her surrounding society, thereby leading to various and often conflicting simultaneous visions of her identity. III. Magic Realism in The Mistress of Spices: The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of
spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo--in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman--travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a shop from which she administers spices as curatives to her customers. An unexpected romance with a handsome stranger eventually forces her to choose between the supernatural life of an immortal and the vicissitudes of modern life. Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy and sorrow and one special woman's magical powers. Mistress of Spices is a story of a girl who is born to poor parents and regarded as a one who will again put her parents in misery as they will have to pay dowry. Little did they know at the time of her birth that she is born with supernatural powers of foreseeing future. As her fame spread, pirates hear about her and abducts her one day! However, she was powerful enough to overthrow the chief and became the queen of pirates. She was not satisfied and when in search of peace, she comes to an island where she is to become the Mistress of Spices under the rigorous training of First Mother. The First Mother teaches her along with other girls all about the Spices. These spices are later to be used to cure other peoples’ misery when given to them with the magical chants. Once she manages to learn all those Special Powers, she is to run a Spice Store in Oakland. She is
given the name ‘Tilo’. Tilo should never leave the store, she should never use the powers for herself but for others to help and last but not the least she should not make any physical contact with any human being. As the story progresses, readers find smaller stories intertwined where Tilo uses her powers to help others. While helping others, she is so taken into it that one after another she starts breaking the forbidden rules laid for Mistresses. Not only she breaks rules but she also allows herself to fall in love with a lonely American. D. B Gavani Commented: “For the second generation Indian like Geeta, the question about identity is differently poised. She challenges continuous identification with patriarchal traditions which she associates her grandfather. Tilo empathizes with Geeta, tries to assenge their pain and the novel tells us that she succeeds in restoring within the family” (Gavani, 79) At first, Tilo allows these perceptions of herself as created by others to dominate her thinking, yet as she assimilates herself to American culture throughout the course of the text, Tilo comes to claim her own self-perception. The result of this knowledge is Tilo's recognition of her multiple consciousnesses, and although this tiplicity is replete with contradictions, Divakaruni nevertheless presents it as a possible solution for Tilo's dilemma of cross-cultural identity formation.
what they have in common as they struggle to save themselves. Divakaruni writes to unite people. Her aims are to destroy myths and stereotypes. She hopes through her writing to dissolve boundaries between people of different backgrounds, communities and ages. II. Plot : Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni presents multiple consciousnesses as an identity that is in between such oppositional states, characterized by being neither rather than both. In The Mistress of Spices, the process of self-perception is the foundation of identity formation for the central character Tilotamma (Tilo). As Tilo strives to define herself as South Asian and American, she develops multiple consciousnesses that manifest themselves in both her experiences and her subsequent relationships with her racial and sexual identities. While Tilo is living in America, she is incapable of pure self-perception, and can only see herself through the eyes of those around her, leaving her own self-seeing as a secondary and almost marginal perspective. Tilo views herself through the lens of her surrounding society, thereby leading to various and often conflicting simultaneous visions of her identity. III. Magic Realism in The Mistress of Spices: The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of
spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo--in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman--travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a shop from which she administers spices as curatives to her customers. An unexpected romance with a handsome stranger eventually forces her to choose between the supernatural life of an immortal and the vicissitudes of modern life. Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy and sorrow and one special woman's magical powers. Mistress of Spices is a story of a girl who is born to poor parents and regarded as a one who will again put her parents in misery as they will have to pay dowry. Little did they know at the time of her birth that she is born with supernatural powers of foreseeing future. As her fame spread, pirates hear about her and abducts her one day! However, she was powerful enough to overthrow the chief and became the queen of pirates. She was not satisfied and when in search of peace, she comes to an island where she is to become the Mistress of Spices under the rigorous training of First Mother. The First Mother teaches her along with other girls all about the Spices. These spices are later to be used to cure other peoples’ misery when given to them with the magical chants. Once she manages to learn all those Special Powers, she is to run a Spice Store in Oakland. She is
given the name ‘Tilo’. Tilo should never leave the store, she should never use the powers for herself but for others to help and last but not the least she should not make any physical contact with any human being. As the story progresses, readers find smaller stories intertwined where Tilo uses her powers to help others. While helping others, she is so taken into it that one after another she starts breaking the forbidden rules laid for Mistresses. Not only she breaks rules but she also allows herself to fall in love with a lonely American. D. B Gavani Commented: “For the second generation Indian like Geeta, the question about identity is differently poised. She challenges continuous identification with patriarchal traditions which she associates her grandfather. Tilo empathizes with Geeta, tries to assenge their pain and the novel tells us that she succeeds in restoring within the family” (Gavani, 79) At first, Tilo allows these perceptions of herself as created by others to dominate her thinking, yet as she assimilates herself to American culture throughout the course of the text, Tilo comes to claim her own self-perception. The result of this knowledge is Tilo's recognition of her multiple consciousnesses, and although this tiplicity is replete with contradictions, Divakaruni nevertheless presents it as a possible solution for Tilo's dilemma of cross-cultural identity formation.
An older woman born with supernatural shaman-like abilities in a small village in India, Tilo's gift is her ability to elicit specific powers inherent in spices and use them to cure the maladies of those around her. In Tilo's preteen years, pirates storm into her home, murder her entire family and abduct Tilo, taking her on board their ship as a prisoner. Eventually, Tilo overthrows the pirate captain to become the pirate “queen, leading [her] pirates to fame and glory, so that bards sang their fearless exploits.”(TMOS, 20) But Tilo abandons this exalted position when mystical sea serpents tell her about the existence of an island upon which she, and other women like her, can develop their supernatural talents to use them for a greater good. This isolated island is a haven for these women, who call themselves the “Mistresses of Spices” and are under the care of the First Mother, the eldest and wisest teacher of all the women. The women are trained in the art of listening and controlling the spices, and are then sent forth into the greater world to aid humanity. After Tilo learns all that she can, she is sent to Oakland, California, to a tiny Indian spice shop where she must begin her duties of healing the masses. Thus, she is thrust into the chaos of American life and the newness of a culture to which she must adapt. Although Tilo has already begun her diasporic journey, she does not feel the loss of a home, but rather a finding of many. Tilo sails
upon a ship to the island of the Mistresses, a reference to the kalipani, or dark water, the term used in order to describe the journey made by indentured laborers and immigrants from the motherland of India to other foreign lands, creating what we today refer to as the “diaspora.” Already, Divakaruni presents Tilo as inextricably mired in the workings of the diaspora, and the entire notion of home becomes displaced, transformed into an intangible condition that is not based on a singular location but rather a movement among many places. When Tilo arrives on the Island, she and the other young girls like her are given new identities, indicating that the past is being relegated to memory and new personas are being forged. Tilo meets the First Mother, a figure who foreshadows the paradoxical identity that Tilo will soon find herself grappling with. The First Mother is elderly and maternal, representing the traditionalist notion of the South Asian woman in the domestic sphere. Yet at the same time, she is outside the boundaries of conventional culture, for she lives on an isolated island, possesses magical powers and urges the young girls toward progression and change rather than the maintenance of the status quo. She is at once the old world and the new, a juxtaposition of differing geographical spaces, times and cultures. Upon their arrival, the First Mother tells the girls, “Daughters it is time for me to give you your new names. For when you came to this island you left your old names behind, and have remained nameless since.” (TMOS, 42)
D B Gavani commented: “Divakaruni is writing the script of women’s rebellion against the pressure to suppress their desire and their bodies. The order of Mistresses clearly replicates patriarchal struggle and Tilo must be made to break free of them. She struggles with her own passions as she builds emotional relationship with Native American man, whom she calls, Raven. She transforms herself into a woman, feeling guilty about her self indulge, but decides to brave the retribution that she would have to face” (Gavani, 80) Tilo, the mistress of spices takes her name from Tilottam, the divine danseuse in Indra’s court. But she also brings another meaning to the name. She associates herself with till, the sesame seed. In this sense the divine and the earthly are united into Tilo. When she decides to give up the divine and restrict herself only to the human, she takes another name Maya, a name with profound mythological and philosophical associations. Maya, in Hindu philosophy is feminine and is the principle behind the entire material universe. The material universe is considered an allusion. When Tilo assumes the name Maya, she once again reasserts her earthly and feminine character. Tilo receives her new name and identity, leaving her childhood in a village in India behind her, and assuming a temporary persona that is of the uncertain present rather than the definitive and historical past. Tilo
spends decades learning the delicate art of the spices, but the moment arrives when she must leave the island and continue the diasporic journey she has begun. Before Tilo is sent to Oakland, the First Mother gives her a knife as a gift, the purpose of which Tilo believes is “...to cut my moorings from the past, the future. To keep me always rocking at sea” (TMOS, 53) Tilo has entered a state of liminality, a space between the past and the future and without a precise knowledge of where the present. She is unmoored and treading the dark waters between the lands of her past and the lands of her future, a theme that will reappear throughout in the text's representations of the relationship between time and space. The Island is the first diasporic space that we encounter, and while it exhibits the same liminality and ambiguity as America does, Divakaruni clearly genders the island differently than she later will America. The Island exudes femininity - specifically, Divakaruni constructs it as a maternal space with the figure of the First Mother and the presence of only females on the island. The Island nurtures Tilo, educating and preparing her for the next stage of life she will encounter when she leaves, and also imbuing Tilo with a sense of singularity of identity. While its women learn and grow, the Island itself never changes- the daily routines of the Mistresses remain the same and an ambiance of
upon a ship to the island of the Mistresses, a reference to the kalipani, or dark water, the term used in order to describe the journey made by indentured laborers and immigrants from the motherland of India to other foreign lands, creating what we today refer to as the “diaspora.” Already, Divakaruni presents Tilo as inextricably mired in the workings of the diaspora, and the entire notion of home becomes displaced, transformed into an intangible condition that is not based on a singular location but rather a movement among many places. When Tilo arrives on the Island, she and the other young girls like her are given new identities, indicating that the past is being relegated to memory and new personas are being forged. Tilo meets the First Mother, a figure who foreshadows the paradoxical identity that Tilo will soon find herself grappling with. The First Mother is elderly and maternal, representing the traditionalist notion of the South Asian woman in the domestic sphere. Yet at the same time, she is outside the boundaries of conventional culture, for she lives on an isolated island, possesses magical powers and urges the young girls toward progression and change rather than the maintenance of the status quo. She is at once the old world and the new, a juxtaposition of differing geographical spaces, times and cultures. Upon their arrival, the First Mother tells the girls, “Daughters it is time for me to give you your new names. For when you came to this island you left your old names behind, and have remained nameless since.” (TMOS, 42)
D B Gavani commented: “Divakaruni is writing the script of women’s rebellion against the pressure to suppress their desire and their bodies. The order of Mistresses clearly replicates patriarchal struggle and Tilo must be made to break free of them. She struggles with her own passions as she builds emotional relationship with Native American man, whom she calls, Raven. She transforms herself into a woman, feeling guilty about her self indulge, but decides to brave the retribution that she would have to face” (Gavani, 80) Tilo, the mistress of spices takes her name from Tilottam, the divine danseuse in Indra’s court. But she also brings another meaning to the name. She associates herself with till, the sesame seed. In this sense the divine and the earthly are united into Tilo. When she decides to give up the divine and restrict herself only to the human, she takes another name Maya, a name with profound mythological and philosophical associations. Maya, in Hindu philosophy is feminine and is the principle behind the entire material universe. The material universe is considered an allusion. When Tilo assumes the name Maya, she once again reasserts her earthly and feminine character. Tilo receives her new name and identity, leaving her childhood in a village in India behind her, and assuming a temporary persona that is of the uncertain present rather than the definitive and historical past. Tilo
spends decades learning the delicate art of the spices, but the moment arrives when she must leave the island and continue the diasporic journey she has begun. Before Tilo is sent to Oakland, the First Mother gives her a knife as a gift, the purpose of which Tilo believes is “...to cut my moorings from the past, the future. To keep me always rocking at sea” (TMOS, 53) Tilo has entered a state of liminality, a space between the past and the future and without a precise knowledge of where the present. She is unmoored and treading the dark waters between the lands of her past and the lands of her future, a theme that will reappear throughout in the text's representations of the relationship between time and space. The Island is the first diasporic space that we encounter, and while it exhibits the same liminality and ambiguity as America does, Divakaruni clearly genders the island differently than she later will America. The Island exudes femininity - specifically, Divakaruni constructs it as a maternal space with the figure of the First Mother and the presence of only females on the island. The Island nurtures Tilo, educating and preparing her for the next stage of life she will encounter when she leaves, and also imbuing Tilo with a sense of singularity of identity. While its women learn and grow, the Island itself never changes- the daily routines of the Mistresses remain the same and an ambiance of
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