The Mistress of Spices Read online

  My thanks to the following persons and

  organizations, each of whom helped to make

  my dream of this book a reality.

  To Sandra Djikstra, my agent, who had faith

  in me from my first story.

  To Martha Levin, my editor, for vision,

  insight and encouragement.

  To Vikram Chandra, Shobha Menon Hiatt,

  Tom Jenks, Elaine Kim, Morton Marcus,

  Jim Quinn, Gerald Rosen,

  Roshni Rustomji-Kerns and C. J. Wallia

  for their very important comments and suggestions.

  To the Arts Council, Santa Clara County,

  and the C.Y. Lee Creative Writing Contest

  for financial support.

  To Foothill College for giving me, through

  a sabbatical, the gift of time.

  To my family—especially my mother,

  Tatini Banerjee, and my mother-in-law,

  Sita Shastri Divakaruni—for their blessings.

  And to Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, whose

  grace illuminates my life,

  every page and every word.

  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.

  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.

  The store has been here only for a year. But already many look at it and think it was always.

  I can understand why. Turn the crooked corner of Esperanza where the Oakland buses hiss to a stop and you’ll see it. Perfect-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. Looped letters that say SPICE BAZAAR faded into a dried-mud brown. Inside, walls veined with cobwebs where hang discolored pictures of the gods, their sad shadow eyes. Metal 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. Bolts 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. Of all things in my store, they are the most ancient. For 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. I too look like I have been here forever. This is what 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 their childhoods. Out of their mothers’ kitchens. Emerald-green burfis, rasogollahs white as dawn and, made from lentil flour, laddus like nuggets of gold. It seems right that I should have been here always, that I should understand without words their longing for the ways they chose to leave behind when they chose America. Their shame for that longing, like the bitter-slight aftertaste in the mouth when one has chewed amlaki to freshen the breath.

  They do not know, of course. That 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. I claim its creases and gnarls no more than water claims the ripples that wrinkle it. They 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. The eyes which alone are my own.

  No. One more thing is mine. My name which is Tilo, short for Tilottama, for I am named after the sun-burnished sesame seed, spice of nourishment. They 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. It is better this way.

  “Remember,” said the Old One, the First Mother, when she trained us on the island. “You are not important. No Mistress is. What is important is the store. And the spices.”

  The store. Even 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. A 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. They hate me a little for it too.

  And then, the questions I ask. To 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. Almost I would laugh if the pity of it did not tug at me so. Each face startling up as though I had put my hands on the delicate oval of jaw and cheekbone and turned it toward me. Though of course I did not. It is not allowed for Mistresses to touch those who come to us. To 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. A few chilies drop to the floor, scattering like hard green rain. The child twists in her mother’s tightened grip, whimpering.

  Their glance skittery with fear with wanting.

  Witchwoman, say the eyes. Under 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. After darkness. They 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. I 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. I will chant. I will administer. I will pray to remove sadness and suffering as the Old One taught. I 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.

  But before the store was the island, and before the island, the village, when I was born.

  How long ago was it, that dry season, that day when heat parched the cracked paddy fields, and my mother thrashed on the birthing mat groaning for water.

  Then steel-blue thunder, and jagged lightning that split the old banyan in the village marketplace. The midwife cried out at the veiny purple cowl over my face, and the fortune-teller in the rainfly-filled evening shook his head sorrowfully at my father.

  They named me Nayan Tara, Star of the Eye, but my parents’ faces were heavy with fallen hope at another girlchild, and this one colored like mud.

  Wrap her in old cloth, lay her face down on the floor. What does she bring to the family except a dowry debt.

  Three days it took the villagers to put out the fire in the marketplace. And my mother lying fevered all the while, and the cows run dry, and I screaming until they fed me milk from a white ass.

  Perhaps that is why the words came to me so soon. And the sight.

  Or was it the loneliness, the need rising angry in a dark girl left to wander the village unattended, with no one caring enough to tell her Don’t.

  I knew who stole Banku the water-carrier’s buffalo, and which servant girl was sleeping with her master. I sensed where under the earth gold lay buried, and why the weaver’s daughter had stopped talking since last full moon, I told the zamindar how to find his lost ring. I warned the village headman of the floods before they came.

  I Nayan Tara, the name which also means Star-seer.

  My fame spread. From neighboring towns and beyond, from the cities that lay on the other side of the mountains, people traveled so I could change their luck with a touch of my hand. They brought me gifts never before seen in our village, gifts so lavish that the villagers talked about them for days. I sat on gold-woven cushions and ate from silver plates studded with precious stones, and wondered at how easy it was to learn the habits of affluence, and how right it seemed that I should do so. I cured the daughter of a potentate, foretold the death of a tyrant, drew patterns on the ground to keep the good winds blowing for merchant sailors. When I looked at them, grown men trembled and threw themselves at my feet, and that too seemed easy and right.

  And so it was that I grew proud and willful. I wore muslins so fine they could be drawn through the eye of a needle. I combed my hair with combs carved from the shells of the great tortoises of the Andamans. I gazed long and admiringly in mirrors framed in mother-of-pearl, though I knew well that I was not beautiful. I slapped servant maids if they were slow to my bidding. At mealtimes I ate the best portions and threw the leavings on the floor for my brothers and sisters. My mother and father dared not voice their anger, for they were afraid of my power. But also they loved the luxury-life it brought them.

  And when I read this in their eyes I felt disdain, and a bile-black triumph that churned in my belly because I who had been last was now first. There was something else too, a deep wordless sorrow, but I pushed it away and would not look at it.

  I Nayan Tara, who had long since forgotten the other meaning of my name: Flower That Grows by the Dust Road. Who did not know then that this would be my name for only a little time more.

  Meanwhile the traveling hauls sang my praises, goldsmiths impressed my likeness on medallions that were worn by thousands for luck, and merchant-sailors carried tales of my powers across the harnessed seas to every land.

  That is how the pirates learned of me.

  When you open the bin that sits by the entrance to the store you smell it right away, though it will take a little while for your brain to register that subtle scent, faintly bitter like your skin and almost as familiar.

  Brush the surface with your hand, and the silky yellow powder will cling to the pads of your palm, to your fingertips. Dust from a butterfly wing.

  Bring it to your face. Rub it on cheek, forehead, chin. Don’t be hesitant. For a thousand years before history began, brides—and those who long to be brides—have done the same. It will erase blemishes and wrinkles, suck away age and fat. For days afterward, your skin will give off a pale golden glow.

  Each spice has a day special to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.

  Turmeric which is also named halud, meaning yellow, color of daybreak and conch-shell sound. Turmeric the preserver, keeping foods safe in a land of heat and hunger. Turmeric the auspicious spice, placed on the heads of newborns for luck, sprinkled over coconuts at pujas, rubbed into the borders of wedding saris.

  But there is more. That is why I pick them only at the precise moment when night slides into day, those bulbous roots like gnarly-brown fingers, why I grind them only when Swati the faith-star shines incandescent in the north.

  When I hold it in my hands, the spice speaks to me. Its voice is like evening, like the beginning of the world.

  I am turmeric who rose out of the ocean of milk when the devas and asuras churned for the treasures of the universe. I am turmeric who came after the nectar and before the poison and thus lie in between.

  Yes, I whisper, swaying to its rhythm. Yes. You are turmeric, shield for heart’s sorrow, anointment for death, hope for rebirth.

  Together we sing this song, as we have many times.

  And so I think at once of turmeric when Ahuja’s wife comes into my store this morning wearing dark glasses.

  Ahuja’s wife is young and seems even younger. Not a brash, buoyant young but raw and flinching, like someone who’s lately been told and told she’s not good enough.

  She comes every week after payday and buys the barest staples: cheap coarse rice, dals on sale, a small bottle of oil, maybe some atta to make chapatis. Sometimes I see her hold up a jar of mango achar or a packet of papads with hesitant wanting. But always she puts it back.

  I offer her a gulab-jamun from the mithai case, but she blushes fiercely and painfully and shakes her head.

  Ahuja’s wife has of course a name. Lalita, La-li-ta, three liquid syllables perfect-suited to her soft beauty. I would like to call her by it, but how can I while she thinks of herself only as a wife.

  She has not told me this. She has said little to me, in all her times of coming, except “Namaste” and “Is this on sale” and “Where can I find.” But I know it as I know other things.

  Such as: Ahuja is a watchman at the docks and likes a drink or two. Or three or four, recently.

  Such as: She too has a gift, a power, though she does not think of it so. Every cloth she touches with her needle blooms.

  One time I found her leaning over the showcase where I keep fabrics, looking at the palloo of a sari embroidered with zari thread.

  I took it out. “Here,” I said, draping it over her shoulder. “That mango color looks so nice on you.”

  “No, no.” She drew back quick and apologetic. “I was only seeing the stitching.”

  “Ah. You stitch.”

  “I used to a lot, once, I loved it. In Kanpur I was going to sewing school, I had my own Singer machine, lot of ladies gave me stitching to do.”

  She looked down. In the dejected curve of her neck I saw what she did not say, the dream she had dared to: One day soon, maybe perhaps why not, her own shop, Lalita Tailor Works.

  But four years back a well-meaning neighbor came to her mother and said, Bahenji, there’s a boy, most suitable, living in phoren, earning American dollars, and her mother said Yes.

  “Why don’t you work in this coun
try,” I asked. “I’m sure many ladies here too need stitching. Wouldn’t you like—”

  She gave me a longing look. “O yes.” Then stopped.

  Here is what she wants to tell me, only how can she, it is not right that a woman should say such things about her man: All day at home is so lonely, the silence like quicksand sucking at her wrists and ankles. Tears she cannot stop, disobedient tears like spilled pomegranate seeds, and Ahuja shouting when he returns home to her swollen eyes.

  He refuses that his woman should work. Aren’t I man enough man enough man enough. The words shattering like dishes swept from the dinner table.

  Today I pack her purchases, meager as always: masoor dal, two pounds of atta, a little jeera. Then I see her looking in the glass case at a silver baby rattle, her eyes dark as a well to drown in.

  For that is what Ahuja’s wife wants most of all. A baby. Surely a baby would make everything right, even the heaving, grunting, never-ending nights, the weight pinning her down, the hot sour animal breath panted into her. His voice like the callused flat of a hand arcing out of the dark.

  A baby to negate it all, tugging at her with its sweetmilk mouth.

  Child-longing, deepest desire, deeper than for wealth or lover or even death. It weighs down the air of the store, purple like before a storm. It gives off the smell of thunder. Scorches.

  O Lalita who is not yet Lalita, I have the balm to lay over your burning. But how unless you ready yourself, hold yourself open to the storm? How unless you ask?

  Meanwhile I give you turmeric.

  A handful of turmeric wrapped in old newspaper with the words of healing whispered into it, slipped into your grocery sack when you are not looking. The string tied into a triple flower knot, and inside, satin-soft turmeric the same color as the bruise seeping onto your cheek from under the dark edge of your glasses.

  Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as reality, an objective and untouched nature of being. Or if all that we encounter has already been changed by what we had imagined it to be. If we have dreamed it into being.