The Mistress of Spices is an experiment in magical realism and it combines Hindu Myths, fables, and superstitions with contemporary American Social problems like interracial tension, ethnic identity, immigrant assimilation and Spiritual emptiness in the lives of rich Indians. This novel is a fable that deals with the magical powers of an ageless mystical Indian Woman – Tilotamma, known as Tilo who originates from a spice island in the Indian Ocean. She runs a store in Oakland, California by selling Indian spices to the immigrants. She is a healer and Spice Seller, and through her telepathic powers, she diagnoses her multiethnic and multi generational client’s physical and mystic ailment which she endeavors to cure with her Secret Spices usually without their knowledge. As she ministers and treats people’s problems, she falls in love with a handsome young male customer, Raven, whom she fondly calls “My American,” and who is eventually revealed to be half-native American and subsequently, an alternate sort of ‘Indian’ - struggling to characterize his own racial and bicultural personality. This paper takes into focus Divakaruni’s novel The Mistress of Spices with reference to the theme of multiple identities. The journey of the protagonist of the novel from Tilo to Maya has been traced besides the predicament of the immigrant population got between two different ways of living from the East and West.
Keywords: magical realism, superstitions, interracial tension, magical powers, telepathic powers, immigrant population, bicultural personality etc.
