The Mistress of Spices (6 page)

Ah, now I have learned how deep in the human heart vanity lies, vanity which is the other face of the fear of being unloved.

But on that day I who was the Old One’s brightest pupil, quick to master every spell and chant, quick to speak with the spices, even the most dangerous, quick to arrogance and impatience as often I was, had thrown them a glance, half pity and half derision. I had looked the Old One boldly in the eye and said, “I am.”

I who was not beautiful and thought therefore I had little to lose.

The Old One’s stare stung me like the thorn-herb. But she said only “Very well.” And called us to approach her, each alone.

Through sea mist the island cast its pearl light around us. In the sky rainbows arced like wings. Each girl knelt, and the Old One bending traced on her forehead her new name. As she spoke it seemed the girls’ features shifted like water, and something new came into every face.

“You shall be called Aparajita after the flower whose juice, smeared on eyelids, leads one to victory.”

“You shall be Pia after the
pal
tree whose ashes rubbed on limbs bring vigor.”

“And you—”

But I had chosen already.

“First Mother, my name will be Tilo.”

“Tilo?” Displeasure echoed in her voice, and the other novices looked up fearfully.

“Yes,” I said, and though I too was afraid, I forced my voice not to reveal it. “Tilo short for Tilottama.”

Ah how naive I was to think I could keep my heart hidden from the Old One, she who would later teach me to look into the hearts of others.

“You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you came, rule-breaker. I should have thrown you out at our first meeting itself.”

I wonder still that she was not angrier that day, the First Mother. Did she see mirrored, in my headstrong self, her own girlhood?

The roots hanging like dreadlocks from the branches of banyan trees rustled in the breeze. Or was it her, sighing?

“This name, do you know what it means?”

It is a question I expected. I have the answer ready.

“Yes, First Mother. Til is the sesame seed, under the sway of planet Venus, gold-brown as though just touched by flame. The flower of which is so small and straight and pointed that mothers pray for their girlchildren to have noses shaped like it. Til which ground into paste with sandalwood cures diseases of heart and liver, til which fried in its own oil restores luster when one has lost interest in life. I will be Tilottama, the essence of til, life-giver, restorer of health and hope.”

Her laugh is the sound of dry leaves snapping underfoot.

“It is certainly not confidence you lack, girl. To take on the name of the most beautiful
apsara
of Rain-god Indra’s court. Tilottama most elegant of dancers, crest-jewel among women. Or had you not known?”

I hang my head. For a moment again I am the ignorant youngster of my first day on the island, sea-wet, naked, stumbling on the sharp slippery stones. Always she can shame me this way.
For this I could hate her if I did not love her so, she who was truly first mother to me, who had given up all hope of being mothered.

Her fingertips, light as breath in my hair.

“Ah, child, you’ve set your heart on it, have you not? But remember: When Brahma made Tilottama to be chief dancer in Indra’s court, he warned her never to give her love to man—only to the dance.”

“Yes Mother.” I am laughing with success, with relief, with triumph at this battle fought and won, pressing my lips to the Old One’s papery palms. “Do I not know the rules? Have I not made the vows?”

And now she writes my new name on my forehead. My Mistress name, finally and forever, after so many changes in who I am. My true-name that I am never to tell to any but the sisterhood. Her finger is cool and moves smooth as oil. The air fills with the clean, astringent fragrance of
til
seeds.

“Remember this too: Tilottama, disobedient at the last, fell. And was banished to earth to live as a mortal for seven lives. Seven mortal lives of illness and age, of people turning in disgust from her twisted, leprous limbs.”

“But I will not fall, Mother.”

No hint of shaking in my voice. My heart is filled with passion for the spices, my ears with the music of our dance together. My blood with our shared power.

I need no pitiful mortal man to love.

I believe this. Wholly.

Give me your hand. Open, then shut. Feel.

Pebble-hard fenugreek lies tight and closed in the center of your palm, color of sand at the bottom of an old creek. But put it in water and it will bloom free.

Bite the swollen kernels between your teeth and taste its bitter sweetness. Taste of waterweeds in a wild place, the cry of gray geese. Fenugreek Tuesday’s spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain. Spice for days when I want to huddle into a quilt stitched with
peepul
leaves and tell stories like on the island. Except here who would I tell them to.

Fenugreek, I asked your help when Ratna came to me burning from the poison in her womb, legacy of her husband’s roving. And when Ramaswamy turned from his wife of twenty years to a newer pleasure.

Listen to fenugreek’s song:
I am fresh as river wind to the tongue, planting desire in a plot turned barren
.

Yes I called to you when Alok who loves men showed me the lesions opening avid as mouths on his skin and said “I guess this is it.” When Binita raised to me her face like a singed flower. Binita with a lump like a nugget of lead in her breast and the doctors saying cut, and the look in her husband’s eyes as he paced and paced the store saying “What shall I do, please.”

I fenugreek who renders the body sweet again, ready for loving
.

Fenugreek
methi
, speckled seed first sown by Shabari, oldest woman in the world. The young scorn you, thinking they will never need. But one day. Sooner than they think.

All of them, yes. Even the bougainvillea girls.

The bougainvillea girls enter in a flock, like dragonflies at noon. Their sudden laughter peals over me. Warm salt waves that take the breath and pull you to drowning. They float through the musty dark of the store, glistery dustmotes on a ray of light. And for the first time I am ashamed and wish everything shiny and new.

The bougainvillea girls have hair polished as ebony, coiled in agile braids. Or rippling like mountain water around upturned faces so confident you know nothing bad has ever happened to them.

They wear jangly bangles in rainbow colors and earrings that swing against the smooth sides of their necks. Their feet arched high in thin glittery heels, their long swaying legs. Their painted nails like purple bougainvillea flowers. Their lips also.

Not for them the dullness of rice-flour-beans-cumin-coriander. They want pistachios for
pulao
, and poppy seeds for
rogan josh
, which they will prepare looking at a book.

The bougainvillea girls don’t see me, not even when they raise their voices to ask “Where’s the
amchur,”
and “Is the
rasmalai
fresh, are you sure.” Blackbird voices pitched high as for the deaf, or the feeble-minded.

For a moment I am angry. Fools, I think. Blind fluttering mascara eyes. My hand curls in a fist around the bay leaves they have thrown so carelessly onto the counter.

I could make them empresses. Oceans of oil and honey to
bathe in, sparkling palaces of rock-sugar. Leaf of water-hyacinth laid on the palm to turn their touch to gold. Unguent of lotus root touched to the nipples for men to lie enslaved at their feet. If I wished.

Or I could—

They think themselves so special. Fortune’s daughters whom she holds high above harm’s touch. But one drop of walnut juice in mandragora, with their names whispered over it. And.

Dust of crushed bay leaf falls from my fist like smoke. A desire leaps clawed like a tiger from its hidden place in me.

I will boil petal of rose with camphor, grind in peacock feathers. Say the words of making and be rid of this disguise I put on when I left the island. This disguise falling like old snakeskin around my feet, and I rising red and new and wet-gleaming. Draped in a veil of diamonds. Tilottama most beautiful, to whom these girls will be like mud scraped from the feet before one crosses the threshold.

My nails cut into my palms. With the blood comes pain. And shame.

“You’ll be tempted,” said the Old One before I left. “You especially with your lava hands that want so much from the world. Your lava heart flying too easily to hate, to envy, to love-passion. Remember why you were given your power.”

Pardon, First Mother.

I wipe contrite hands against my sari. My sari old and patched and stained to guard me against this vanity that presses hot at the walls of my skull, swollen like steam. I breathe it out, red mist. And when I breathe in, I hold on to the smell of the spices. Clean, sharp, sane. Letting me see again.

And so I bless them, my bougainvillea girls. Bless the round
bones of their elbows, the glide of hips beneath their silky
salwaars
, their Calvin Klein jeans. With the fervor of repentance I bless the curve of their moist palms against the bottles of lime pickles they are holding up to the light, the cans of
patra
leaf they will fry tonight for bridegrooms or lovers, for they are always newly wed, the bougainvillea girls, or not at all.

I crinkle my eyes and see them in evening: the lights turned low, silk cushions the color of midnight embroidered with tiny mirrors. Perhaps a little music in the distance, sitar or saxophone.

They are serving their men
biriyani
fragrant with ghee, cool bowls of
raita, patra
seasoned with fenugreek. And for dessert, dripping with gold honey,
gulab-jamuns
the color of dark roses.

The men’s eyes too darken, like roses under a storm sky.

Later the women’s mouths, moist red O’s opening as they had for the
jamuns
, the men’s breathing hot and uneven, rising and plunging and rising again into a cry.

I see it all. So beautiful, so brief, so therefore sad.

I let the envy drain out. They are only following their natures, the bougainvillea girls. As I against every advice followed mine.

Envy like green pus, gone now. All of it. Almost.

I breathe a good thought over each purchase as I ring it up. The bay leaves, a new packet, their brown edges crisp and whole, I put in for free.

For my bougainvillea girls, whose bodies glow saffron in bed, whose mouths smell of my fenugreek, my
elach
, my
paan paraag
. Whom I have made. Musky. Fecund. Irresistible.

I sleep with a knife under my mattress. Have done it for so long that the little bump its hilt makes just below my left shoulder blade feels as familiar as a lover’s hand pressing.

Tilo you’re a great one to be talking of lovers.

I love the knife (I cannot call it mine) because it was given to me by the Old One.

I remember the day, muted orange of butterfly wings, and a sadness already in the air. She was handing each Mistress a going-away gift. Some received flutes, some incense burners, some looms. A few were given pens.