Hot Aishwarya Rai, to be 'Mistress of Spices'

         
Aishwarya Rai is doing a masala film where She's going to play the lead in the movie version of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel. The Mistress of Spices .
The story by the Indian-American author revolves around Tilo, an Indian woman in Oakland, California, who runs a spice shop and has magical powers          

Directed by
Paul Mayeda Berges

Writing credits
Paul Mayeda Berges
Gurinder Chadha   

 More than five years after Chadha showed interest in turning Divakaruni's magic realism novel, The Mistress of Spices into a movie, the filmmaker is ready to start shooting the film. However, Chadha will not direct the movie that casts Dylan McDermott opposite Rai. Her scriptwriting partner and husband Paul Mayeda Berges will. The movie will be shot extensively in northern California.    

 Few months ago Chadha and Berges spent a weekend with the Divakaruni family near San Francisco to discuss the film's script and direction. "I have admired Gurinder's films for long, especially Bhaji On The Beach," Divakaruni added. "My book is in great hands."      

What does it mean to be an Indian woman in America today? Few writers speak to the hyphenated-American experience more accurately and gracefully than Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni, author of Arranged Marriage. This book of short stories, in which she gives voice to several Indian women married in an age-old tradition, struggling between ancient and modern cultures, won several literary prizes and established the author as one of today's most exciting new voices.

In her new novel, The Mistress of Spices, just released to stunning reviews, she draws the reader into the delicious, mystical world of Tilo and her magical Indian spice shop, and, once there, gives us a very real, bitter slice of modern-day Oakland. Her lyrical, sensual prose manages both to delight and horrify, and as we explore the hidden corners of Tilo's shop our senses are overwhelmed by what we find there, desires and fears nestled within the packages of turmeric and ginger, and a culture as old as lotus root trying to find its way in a new world.

In this issue of Bold Type, Chitra contributes an essay on her close brush with death while delivering her second child, as well as an author notebook on her work with MAITRI, a helpline for South Asian women. Finally, an excerpt from The Mistress of Spices displays the author's unique and mesmerizing writing.

The New York Times Book Review states that The Mistress of Spices "becomes a novel about choosing between a life of special powers and one of ordinary love and compassion." Did Tilo choose correctly? Why or why not?

How do the spices become characters in the novel?

Tilo only speaks her name out loud to one person in the novel. What is the significance of this action? What role do names play in the novel?

What do the spices take from Tilo? What do they give her? Is it a fair exchange?

Tilo left her shop for the first time early in the novel to look at Haroun's cab. But later she is drawn even further out by Raven. Was her course already set at that point? Would she have left again even without Raven's pull?

In what ways is punishment seen as a natural force in this novel? How are punishment and retribution tied to balance?

Tilo says, "Better hate spoken than hate silent." Does hate spoken achieve the effect Tilo intends or not?

Divakaruni chose to write The Mistress of Spices in the first person present tense. Does this point of view add or detract from the story?

What passages in the novelresemble poetry? How does Divakaruni make use of lyricism and rhythm?

What role does physical beauty play in this story? In Tilo's feelings about her body? About Raven? About the bougainvillea girls?

Does Raven's story (pp. 161-171) differ from Tilo's story of her past at the points where she tells it? Do these differences say anything about the differences between women and men, or between Indians and Americans?

How are physical acts of violence and disaster (earthquake, beatings, guns) foreshadowed in the novel? What is the significance of foreshadowing in the Indian culture?

The Mistress of Spices (1997)
The Mistress of Spices is unique in that it is written with a blend of prose and poetry. The book has a very mystical quality to it, and, as Divakaruni puts it, "I wrote 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."

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