Food for Thought: Multiculturalism, Femininity and Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices

Abstract

Literary and critical theory has recently occupied themselves with the politics of location and there is an increased consciousness about the identities and cultures being constructed through culinary categories. Women are the sites where the presence of one culture in thought and world of the other are negotiated. Home has increasingly become a contested site with the political making inroads into the guarded sanctity of this personal space. The process is best observed the world over in the growing community of diaspora with geographical location not only making them review their perception of home and homeland, but also making it imperative for them to view the alternative as at par with the native. (Jain107).Divakaruni’s novels deal with the quest for identity – individual and communal – and an emotional completion achieved by their fusing. Another feature of her novels is that she weaves a realism, divinity and mysticism into the commonplace reality of her female characters.Her experience of immigrating “caused Divakaruni to re-evaluate her homeland’s culture, and specifically its treatment of women” (Sofky 1997). She weaves elements of the Indo- American experience and magic realism, combining the realistic and the cosmic. In The Mistress of Spices, Nayantara, the pirate queen, also called Sarpakanya,the oldone’s apprentice, becomesTilottama in a journey which leaves her as Maya in the end. It is unknown what was or is the original nature of her spirit. She sails into amazing areas of experiences where transformations require more than time, distance, and desire.Women like Tilo, make diasporic journeys, and identify points in their search for identity. Divakaruni’s novels are thus an adventurous expedition into the complex minds of women.