Identity Question in Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices
Sahadev Roy
State Aided College
Teacher
Department of
English
Dewanhat
Mahavidyalaya
Cooch Behar, West
Bengal, India
&
Ph.D. Research
Scholar
Department of
English
O.P.J.S. University
Churu, Rajasthan, India
Abstract:
Identity is the projection of
self. It is generally formed through a series of accidental accumulations.
Everyone has a separate identity, for instance, an individual has childhood
impressions and identity. He has an identity as a man, a husband, a
professional and so on. Self image transform self identity. The present
research attempts to focus on quest for identity in Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices. Divakaruni depicts the problems of
immigration and cultural identity crisis in the novel. The paper discusses
these with a critical analysis.
Keywords: Identity, Culture, Gender, Crisis
Diaspora Literature includes a thought of a homeland,
local area and journey from local to non-local area. Diasporic writing is full
of feelings of migration, sentiments of estrangement, and love for the native
country. It provides us about a twofold recognizable proof with the first
country, quest for identity and freedom, ancient stories, mythic thoughts and
dissent against segregation in the adopted country. Diaspora writers mainly
focus on the identity of immigrants. Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams say that
“Identity as people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people they
are, and how they relate to others” (2). In connection to this, Staurt Hall
rightly defines: “Identity is a process, identity is split. Identity is not a
fixed point but an ambivalent point. Identity is also the relationship of the
other to oneself” (9). Without identity, human beings are not possible to exist
in the society as it is self reorganization. Alexander Wendt observes
identities are “relatively stable, role-specific understandings and
expectations about self” (397). There are many writers who poured the themes
related to immigration, identity, and quest for freedom. Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni is one among from them. She is a diaspora writer. Her major themes
center on her wish to examine the identity of South Asian women. Like the works
of Rohinton Mistry, Bharati Mukherjee, and Jhumpa Lahiri, the works of Chitra
also deal with identity, migration and diaspora. She helped numerous immigrant
women to cope with new culture by establishing a helping hand for the South
Asian women named ‘MAITRI.’ She published poetry, short fiction and novels. In
an interview with Erica Bauer, she says:
I
really like using different forms of writing – each form has its own strength.
To me poetry focuses on the moment and in images, it feels like an intuitive
form of writing. Recently I’ve been writing more fiction because I’m interested
in exploring relationships and showing the differences that develop into
characters. (1).
Divakaruni’s famous collection of poetry is: Dark like
the River (1987), Reason for Nasturtiums (1990) and Black Candle (1991).
These poems express the themes of love, marriages, domestic violence and
immigration. Her first novel The Mistress of Spices was published
in 1997. It is a unique novel in which we see the features of prose and poetry.
Related to this novel, the writer says: “I wrote the book in a spirit of
play, collapsing the divisions between the realistic world of twentieth
century America and the timeless one of myth and magic in my attempt to
create a modern fable” (1). The novel deals with the magical powers of
an imperishable woman Tilo. She starts from the spice island and runs a supermarket
in inner-city Oakland and utilizations spices to help the Indian settlers and
immigrants with defeating troubles. The novel is mythical and mystical.
Indeed, it is an evocative of fables and fairy tales. Divakaruni
explains the story in transporting. Amy Tan says that the novel is a
dazzling tale of “misbegotten dreams and desires, hopes and expectations,
woven with poetry and storyteller magic.” Her main character migrates to the
United States of America. She has shown her struggle as a non-local
resident including the cultural quest also. She herself writes in her
blog:
Sometimes I’m asked if I would have become a writer
if I hadn’t moved to the United States. I don’t know the answer to that
question. I do know, though, that I couldn’t have written the same kind of
stories, hybrids born out of the melding of the Indian and American cultures.
(How 2013)
Immigrants need to change themselves mentally. It is not
possible thing to forget one’s culture and language as these involve in one’s
mind and body. Without any invitation, they come out easily in communication.
In connection to this, Vanjulavalli remarks: “When people migrate from one
country to another, many changes occur in their lives. One of the significant
changes is assimilation which happens first and foremost as soon as they step
into the western or foreign country. Immigrants transform themselves in many
aspects” (87). Divakaruni’s writing has come late in life and it is directly
tied to her migrant experiences. In an interview in the San Francisco
Examiner Magazine, Divakaruni says that “being an expatriate made me what
to write because it is such a powerful and poignant experience when you live
away from your original culture and this becomes home, but never quite, and
then you can’t go back and be quite at home there either, so you become a kind
of outsider to both cultures”.
The novel is a mystical tale told by Tilo, a
businessperson born in India. She is a young woman in an old woman’s body who
is well trained in the secret powers of spices. She assists clients with
fulfilling their requirements and wants with the otherworldly properties of
flavors. She has the power to see into people’s hearts and minds. She
emotionally involves with her customers. The writer has shown American racism
here. As Laura Merlin in a Review in World Literature Today states,
“Divakaruni builds an enchanted story upon the fault line in American society
that lies between the self and the community. Addressing the immigrant
experience in particular, she asks how to negotiate between the needs of each
under the earth moving stress of desire” (207).
Tilo like Bharati Mukherjee’s main characters from her
novels Wife and Jasmine has the identity crisis. These Indian
women suffer from identity in foreign land. Tilo meets some people who help
her. She applies magical power on Lalita, Ahuja, and Geeta. Tilo, an immigrant
from India, runs a spice shop in Oakland, California. The store has the inner
room with its sacred and secret shelves. When she happens to see the customers,
she used to raise questions related to their problems. “Remember” said the old
one, the first mother, when she trained us on the island. “You are not
important. 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 mind-have-been” (5) so the customers
used to felt shocked and call her a ‘Witch Woman’ (6). They keep their alert expense
away from her yet they will return later to her. At the point when they return,
she will bring them into the internal room and will illuminate the light and
chant. She will pay to eliminate pity and sufferings as the Old One educated.
Tilo left the island precisely for this reason. Elizabeth Softky points out
that for Divakaruni, “Tilo is the quintessential immigrant- she must decide
which parts of her heritage she will keep and which parts she will leave
behind” (26).
Tilo’s life changes when she falls for an American man
named Raven, whom the novel unequivocally suggests is Native American. She
can’t read his inner thoughts. Lamentably, she decides to ignore the guidelines
of her preparation in her quest for sentiment and her choice to search out customers
outside her shop, which brings about the flavors perpetrating discipline on her
and those she thinks about. To spare Raven from being another victim of the
flavors’ amazing magic, she chooses to leave him following one last night where
they have intercourse. Subsequently, she acknowledges the discipline for
dismissing the guidelines of her preparation, which brings about the store
being destroyed in an earthquake. She and Raven accommodate and choose to help
rebuild the shop.
Tilo is left unattended, however Nayan Tara, as she is
named before long gets the consideration of the residents because of her
quality to foretell future. This made pirates to attack the village and take
Nayan Tara with them. They named her Bhagyavati and soon Bhagyavati deposes the
Pirate King and gains the position. Before long she tired of this lifted up
position and arrives at the old island. There, she meets the Old One who is
likewise referred as the First Mother or Old Mother. Tilo learns the
indulgences of flavors and shipped off Oakland. Tilo is a healer and spice
seller and through her psychic forces she analyzes her multiethnic and
multigenerational customers' physical and mystic disease with the assistance of
her mystery flavors. During the time spent this treatment, she creates problems
of her own when she falls in love with a non-Indian Raven.
Tilo needs to pick whether to serve her people or to
follow the way prompting her own satisfaction. Tilo has to choose which parts
of her legacy, she will keep and which parts she will decide to surrender.
Toward the finish of the novel, Tilo is renamed as 'Maya' torn between the
human love of her man who needs to move with her to the 'earthly paradise' and
interminable life and information by getting back to her function as a network
partner. Thus Divakaruni deals with a variety of issues in the book, including
racism, migration, freedom, love, and marriage. As Velmani says, “Divakaruni
combines the unfamiliar, the female Indian immigrants experience with the
familiar urban life in America, blending the two into a magical narrative that
relates a gifted young woman’s plight as an outsider in southern California as
a Mistress of Spices” (176).
Ahuja’s wife is young and seems ever younger. She comes
into Tilo’s store every week. She buys cheap rice, dal, and a small bottle of
oil. She has a name Lalita as it suits to her soft beauty. She is never
referred to by her real name. She was called by her husband name. Her story is
the story of married women. Even though she didn’t like the bridegroom, she
married her because of not opposing the Indian traditional norms. He, a
tyrannical man, came from America. She married her and left her dreams. Like
many feminist writers, Divakaruni has also shown how the married women get the
identity crisis.
Works Cited
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