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Chapter II

Fusion of Oriental Values with Occidental Ethos in

The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams

India’s achievement of variety in unity is of world wide

importance. Indian appreciation of variety is an object lesson of

immense value to the rest of the world. The perils that beset the

ancient Indian culture are European materialism and the indifference

of Indians to their culture. True happiness in this world is the right

earthly aim of man. It lies in the finding and the maintaining of a

natural harmony of spirit, mind and body which is the basis of Indian

culture.

Culture should serve as the right key to this harmony and

civilization should aid in the manner in which the harmony is brought

out. A civilization in search of this aim may be materialistic like

western culture or spiritualistic like the culture of India. India’s social

system is built upon dharma -- conscious morality. India is the

Bharata Shakthi and her fidelity to this spiritual conception has

enabled India in her survival in the human world.

The westernization of the east is a process of cultural exchange

or assimilation. The cultural change and the cross fertilization of

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cultures is inevitable. There are a lot of differences between American

and Indian cultures and values. American culture is an amalgam of

different cultures. In the matter of tradition the Americans are in a

fortunate position because they have no ancient culture like the

Indian culture.India, however, has had a long tradition.

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, a great scholar characterizes the west as

inclined to dogmatism, the scientific method whose domain is limited

to the exploration of the outer world, and a reliance upon

second-hand knowledge (34). India has its own culture and values.

The culture of India is rooted in the ancient Vedic culture of the Indus

Valley civilization. According to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the east is

dominated by openness to inner experience and spiritual

experimentation (36).

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan tried to build a bridge between eastern

and western thought showing each to be comprehensible within the

terms of the other. He introduced western idealism into Indian

philosophy and was the first scholar of importance to produce a

comprehensive exegesis of India’s religious and philosophical

literature to English speaking people. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan has been

held in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the west.

He has been influential in shaping the west’s understanding of

Hinduism, India, and the east.

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Swami Vivekananda is one of the few stalwarts who brought

about the cultural Renaissance in the nineteenth century India.

His trip to Chicago and the speech at the World Parliament of

Religions proved a landmark in Indian cultural history. His deep

spiritual insight, fervid eloquence and philanthropic ideas won the

western world. The world began to look upon India in a different light.

In The Foundations of Indian Culture (1992), Sri Aurobindo

examines the Indian civilization and culture (24). Aurobindo brings

out the central motivating tendencies of the Indian culture and

explores how these tendencies are expressed in its religion and

spirituality, its art, literature and politics (47).

Many of the differences between eastern and western cultures

stem from the fact that eastern cultures and values are based on their

religion. Spirituality has been the essence of one’s life in India.

Hinduism believes in the theory of Karma and Rebirth. It inculcates in

the mind of the Hindus a sense of fear for doing wrong things.

The underlying principles of Hindu religious practices are closely

connected with scientific principles on health and hygiene.

Smearing of the house, temples and outside with cow dung by the

Hindus keep them away from sickness. Importance is given to early

bath, if possible in the running water. Hindu practices of Yoga,

Pranayama, Suryanamaskar, and Meditation etc., contribute to the

betterment of body and mind, and in turn to the soul too. The dos

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and don'ts specified in Hindu culture go a long way in shaping the

mind and body of individuals.

The main difference between the western and eastern cultures

lies in religion, marriage and social interaction. The west is rational

and logical, while the east is predominantly religious and mystical.

The word culture is derived from the French word ‘Cultura’ which

means to cultivate, to till, to grow. Therefore culture is a process of

growth through the means of education, discipline and training.

Western and Indian cultures are diametrically opposed. The reason

for this is that western culture is based on the principles of

materialism, whereas Indian culture is based on the tenets and

principles of spiritualism.

Indian culture has been foregrounded adroitly with negligible

traces of displacement or rootlessness, keeping intact the author’s

Indian sensibility and identity. The Indian English novel has won

accolades, bringing cultures and interpreting reality from their own

angle of vision.

As early as 1894 in Kamala, a novel which was the first of its

kind, Krupabai Satthianadhan explored the cultural clash suffered by

a Hindu woman with a western education in India. And the

experience of being caught between two cultures has remained a

prominent theme in the writings by Indian women. In 1909,

Sarath Kumar Ghose wrote The Prince of Destiny dealing with the

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inter – cultural theme where the hero, the prince of a native Indian

state, had to choose between the love of an English girl and marriage

with an Indian princess. In the novels written during the Gandhian

era, the dialectics between the east and the west encounter operates

as the conflict between pre-industrial modes of life and mechanization

as in K.S. Venkatramani’s Murugan the Tiller (1927) and in

V.V. Chintamani’s Vedantam, the Clash of Traditions (1928).

Rama Mehta’s Inside the Haveli (1977) portrays the issues of

traditional Indian culture, particularly the debate on female

education. Another example of the western educated female

protagonists’s quest for her cultural roots is Gita Hariharan’s

The Thousand Faces of Night (1992).

The Indian diaspora has witnessed a massive migration of

people of their own volition from the Indian subcontinent to the

metropolitan centres of Europe, America, Canada and Australia.

The diasporic Indians of this group are mostly highly educated

professionals; and because of their professional exigencies, they have

stayed away from their motherland, and in a majority of cases they

have become settlers where once they were only sojourners.

The pace of border-crossing has risen to a new dimension, with

migrants seeking to transfigure cultural boundaries and re-create new

representations of their pasts, their selves, and their new milieus.

Consequently, identities and cultures get delocalized -- but seldom

detached from memories of the past. These diasporic people evoke the

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past in highly selective modes and build a present that is a hybrid of

multiple cultures and experiences.

All journeys away from home are only journeys towards home.

To some extent the diasporic experience begins with some of our great

freedom fighters, like Jawaharlal Nehru, who also felt that he was an

alien in India and abroad. Writers have often assumed a role in the

development of society by using literature as a platform to invoke

social change. South Asian diasporic writers have attained official

recognition as part of the American literary tradition. Some of the

names, which foreground their literary status are Bharathi Mukerjee,

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Meena Alexander, Meena Nair,

Kiran Desai and Jumpa Lahiri. In Diaspora and Multiculturalism

(1998) Ramraj observes that,

Though diasporic writing is about or by peoples who

are linked with common histories of uprooting and

dispersal, it develops different cultural and historical

identities depending on the political and cultural

particularities of the dominant society. (229)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Asian American with her

ancestral roots in Bengal, India. She has transcended boundaries,

negotiating two different worlds from various perspectives.

She attempts to interlace the elements of myth, magic and ancient

culture alongside the contemporary culture. The east-west

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confrontation, or the clash between tradition and modernity is the

impulse behind the works of acclaimed migrant writers.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni tries to fuse the oriental values with the

occidental ethos. She often focuses on characters balancing two

worlds, particularly on Indian immigrants’ struggle through life in

America. Most of her works are about the Indian immigrants in the

United States from the author’s native region of Bengal and the stories

are often told by female narrators from the first person point of view.

Living in the United States, Divakaruni becomes more aware of the

differences in culture which urges her to explore it in all its essentials.

Arun Mukherjee in Her Mother’s Ashes (1995) writes

“people do not leave their histories and cultures behind when they

migrate. They build on their histories and cultures, taking and

leaving, borrowing and adding on them” (xii). Divakaruni exhibits an

excellent perspective of life between and within the two cultures in her

novels The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams.

The Mistress of Spices deals with an immigrant woman’s

journey from the established paradigms of the past to an uncharted

future in America. The novel presents the dilemma of negotiating one’s

cultural and biological identity with the drama of alienation and self

transformation in the adopted homeland, America. Queen of Dreams

is another tale of east meeting west. It talks about the trials,

tribulations and experiences of the Indian American community

through the lives of a Bengali immigrant family. The novel is divided

65

between India and the United States of America, although the entire

story takes place in America.

Divakaruni begins her novel The Mistress of Spices with a

simple, declarative statement, “I am a Mistress of Spices” (3).

This claim invites the reader to sustain, to find an answer to the

question, What is a Mistress of Spices?. The concept for

The Mistress of Spices grew out of a near-death experience in 1994,

that Divakaruni had after her second pregnancy. Following mishaps

during delivery Divakaruni found herself hospitalized, caught in the

boundary somewhere between life and death for one month. She went

into a meditative state that allowed her to experience a profound

understanding and appreciation for life.

In an interview with Julie Rajan in Dissolving Boundaries

Divakaruni has confessed the truth that, that the art of dissolving

boundaries is what living is about (Aug. 1997). She does not know

how Tilo (Tilotamma) her heroine, the mistress of spices, came to her.

In this novel she has tried to dissolve the divisions between the

realistic world of twentieth-century America and the timeless one of

myth and magic predominant in India. Combining these two worlds,

she is able to create a modern fable.

The protagonist, Tilo, is one who controls and is controlled by a

store filled with Indian spices. The spices are characterized as

“holding magic, even the everyday American spices, but the spices of

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true power are from the mistress’ birth land” (MS 3). The history of

the protagonist is unique, yet sad. She is born into silence, but can

speak. Her birth is described with bitter remembrance:

They named me Nayan Tara, star of the eye, but my

parents’ faces were heavy with fallen hope at another

girlchild . . . Wrap her in old cloth, lay her face down

on the floor . . . Perhaps that is why the words came

to me so soon . . . Or was it the loneliness, the need

rising angry in a dark girl left to wonder the village

unattended. (MS 8)

Nayan Tara throws herself in, after the investigation of a

magical island of spices. She is one of the lucky few who are accepted

by the Old one, a grand ancient figure who rules over the island.

Nayan Tara, passes through a cleansing, transmogrifying flame,

Shampati’s fire. Then she sets up a haven, a store, from which she

bestows her scholarly yet magical gift of physical and spiritual

healing, through the sale and complimentary distribution of spices.

Before the departure from the island, each apprentice must choose a

new name, one rich in meaning and apt in its appropriateness.

This is not only symbolic of their new identity as mistresses, but in

the case of the protagonist, a new identity in a new world. Nayan Tara

chooses the name Tilotamma.

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Tilo’s day of departure is especially poignant for the

inexperienced mistress who never had a true family. Her background

makes Tilo a perfect, resilient candidate to face life as an outsider in

the twentieth century California. In creating a setting as this,

Divakaruni constructs a narrative based around the influx of a variety

of characters who translate their plight as immigrants to the

United States to the protagonist. Tilo’s task is to mollify her

customer’s individual pain and suffering through specifically selected

spices, each noted for their particular power. It is through Tilo’s eyes

and the psychic vision she has for her customers, that it is possible to

learn the life of a subaltern population. The spices can heal and

comfort, but when used wrongly can also ruin or hold back or even

ghettoize. Divakaruni, in analyzing the role that the spices play in her

novel, describes how they stand for the various aspects of the culture

that the Indian immigrants carry with them.

The mystical power of interpreting dreams and warning the

victims of the impending danger forms an interesting part of

Queen of Dreams.

Our dream world overflows with confused images . . .

streets turning to quicksand, talking fish and so on.

Yet dreams have a remarkable quality of seeming real.

Once awake, we remain spellbound, muttering,

“what did it mean?” (Uma 53)

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It is this gulf between dreams and reality that Divakaruni seeks

to highlight in her fourth novel, Queen of Dreams. Divakaruni often

focuses on characters balancing two worlds, particularly Indian

immigrants struggling through life in America. Is the orient happy in

the west? Does he or she assimilate the occidental values?

Divakaruni attempts to fuse both the values in her novels.

In Queen of Dreams, she attempts to bridge the gulf between an

American-born daughter and an Indian immigrant mother.

The mother is gifted with the ability to interpret dreams.

The daughter yearns to understand her mother’s behaviour and her

work.

Mrs. Gupta, a first-generation Indian immigrant in America is

the queen of dreams. Her job consists of interpreting other people’s

dreams and warning them about the imminent danger and problems.

Rakhi, her daughter is an American by birth and grows up with a

feeling of belonging to her land of birth. She is a young divorcee and a

struggling artist. She runs a tea shop named The Chai House to earn

a living and provide for her six year old daughter Jona. Her partner in

business and her best friend is Belle, a second-generation Indian

American who provides a sharp contrast to Rakhi in her pro-American

attitude. Although Rakhi is comfortable in her American life, she feels

a strong connection towards her Indianness. However, her mother

wants to spare her the tale of her strange and painful past in India

and her ability to read dreams. This only arouses her curiosity and

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she starts craving for all things Indian. She admits, “I hungered for

all things Indian because my mother never spoke of the country she’d

grown up in -- just as she never spoke of her past” (QD 35).

Rakhi desires intensely for India, and also wishes for closeness

with her own mother, a closeness that has always been denied to her

because of her mother’s profession of being a dream teller.

My mother always slept alone. Until I was eight years

old, I didn’t give it much thought -- My discovery

occurred on an afternoon when I’d gone to play at the

home of my classmates -- Why don’t you sleep with

Dad? I Kept asking . . . Don’t you love us? -- I do love

You -- I don’t sleep with you or your father because my

work is to dream. I can’t do it if someone is in bed

with me. (QD 6-7)

One can also understand Rakhi’s interest in Indian heritage by

her paintings about India and her imagined India as she has never

gone to India. Rakhi longs to inherit her mother’s gift of interpreting

dreams as it is “-- a noble vocation, at once mysterious and helpful to

the world. To be an interpreter of the inner realm seemed so Indian

(QD 35).

In the novels of Divakaruni, the social and psychological

development of the non-western immigrant and the culturally

displaced European transplant are explored. Woven throughout the

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narrative of The Mistress of Spices, is a tale of oppression, one that

is associated with the theme of familial expectations of Indian women

in America. This account of rebellion and exclusion is not related

from the point of view of the oppressed female, Geeta. It is told from

her grandfather’s perspective. This inversion in standpoint heightens

the reader’s sensitivity; it creates sympathy for an intelligent Indian

woman caught between love and custom. Her grandfather says,

“-- mental peace I am not having, not even one iota, since I crossed

the Kalapani and came to this America -- better to have no

granddaughter than one like this Geeta” (MS 87). The grandfather is

angry, not because the girl is obtuse, flippant or defiant, but because,

in coming to America at an impressionable age, she has subsequently

begun to assimilate to its culture. She buys cosmetics and expensive

cars with “the money she should save for her dowry” (MS 89), with

little concern over her future as a wife.

Divakaruni also explains the traditional expectations of Indian

women in their native culture as a daughter, a wife, a daughter-in-law

and a mother. The traditional value Ahuja maintains and dangles

over his wife in the United States is clearly brought out in the novel

The Mistress of Spices. Ahuja’s wife’s name is Lalita, which suits

her beauty as the name Lalita has three lucid syllables La-li-ta.

Tilo wants to call her by her name but Lalita prefers to be called

Ahuja’s wife.

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Lalita is an apt example of the oriental culture, where a woman

hides her own identity willingly in order to pacify the male dominance

of the husband, by referring to her as her husband’s wife.

Lalita knows sewing. She had been to a sewing school in Kanpur.

Lalita wanted to continue to do sewing in America, after her marriage

to Ahuja. But she has been denied of her desire, because of her

husband’s dominance. He has a firm view that his woman should not

take up any profession. “Aren’t I man enough man enough man

enough” (MS 16). She remained Ahuja’s wife. These eastern values,

when transmitted to include the value system of a more liberated

society, such as that of America, can remedy and placate in the face of

stereotypes and racism.

Divakaruni’s books are devoted to the study of women of all

races and faiths who share a common female experience. All her

heroines find themselves within the constraining boundaries of their

cultures and religions. Her female characters struggle in their balance

between family responsibilities and individual happiness. It is in a

way at the centre of the conflict between the Hindu culture which

always shows the mother as the giver, as the nurturer, and as

sacrificing herself for the good of the family and the western concept of

self-happiness. All through Rakhi’s childhood, her mother is careful

to ensure that her dream work did not disrupt her family’s life. This is

what Rakhi resents: “. . . that her mother, with such meticulous

motherness, kept her out of the place she wanted most to enter.

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That she denied her her birthright and doomed her to the bland life of

suburban America” (QD 43).

In the western cultures, dream interpretation is a science,

practised by the psychologists. In the Indian culture, dream

interpretation is a gift. This gift is possessed by Mrs. Gupta and she

relishes the gift. She does not want to share her secrets with her

daughter. Rakhi, natural to her American culture, wants to analyse

her mother’s gift.

-- I wanted to be an interpreter. -- I grew obsessed

with the idea. I saw it as a noble vocation, at once

mysterious and helpful to the world. To be an

interpreter of the inner realm seemed so Indian

(QD 35).

Rakhi also wants to understand the dream interpretations

scientifically.

Rakhi is fully tuned to the American culture. She is shocked to

see her mother’s behaviour as a dream interpreter. Rakhi is also

happy that she has not learnt the ways of her mother. At one time

Rakhi wants to analyse; at another time she feels happy that she has

not learnt the ways of her mother. This brings out the insecure

feelings in Rakhi. For a second-generation Indian-American like

Rakhi, the sensation of being in-betweens is particularly accentuated.

Conflicts typically arise from the cultural clash between American

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individualism and Indian communitarianism. The value system and

culture of the second-generation is unclear. When Rakhi compares

her stance with that of her mother, she reflects, “Thank God, my

world is simpler. Even my tragedies are simple ones, colored in

commonplace blues” (QD 41).

In The Mistress of Spices, Geeta’s grandfather complains

about Geeta’s behaviour because he is an Indian -- a Bengali in

America. Hence he is not able to acknowledge the American way of

living and Geeta’s employment with foreigners and her returning home

at uncivilised hours. Geeta has other plans, plans that exclude an

arranged marriage because that will send her back to India.

Her grandfather is of the view that, “from birth a girl’s real home is

with her future husband’s family” (MS 91).

The family becomes a battlefield where modernity clashes with

tradition, where Indian culture clashes with American culture.

Geeta follows modernity. She says, “Can you see me with a veil over

my head sitting in a sweaty kitchen all day, a bunch of house keys

tied to the end of my sari -- it just isn’t for me” (MS 91-92).

However, Geeta’s family counters this decision with a serious

reproach, for not respecting their culture, while Geeta feels they have

no interest in respecting hers. Her conclusion is to leave home and

move in with her boyfriend, Juan Cordero, a Hispanic.

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In her search for happiness through love, Geeta, is threatened

by her own reluctance to abandon traditional Indian culture.

This could invite excommunication from her family, the only support

system that she has in America. Geeta is an acceptor of diverse

consequences. In opting against the ambiguous outcome of arranged

marriage, she distances herself from familial love. As Divakaruni

observes:

The paradox in cultural assimilation is to find that

balance between change and holding on. It is very

important to find balance because neither extreme is

healthy. We cannot forget who we were and still are.

Neither can we hold slavishly onto what we were,

because what then is the point of coming to a new

country? I think that’s what the grandfather learns at

the end of Mistress: that what you hold onto are the

deep values of loving and caring for the family and

doing the best for the family; what you give up are the

ways in which you do that. (Kalamaras 6)

Geeta’s silence speaks of a necessity to chart her own life through

cultural experimentation.

The second half of the novel Queen of Dreams concentrates on

the mingling of reality, dreams and nightmares. Rakhi locates the

dream journals after her mother’s unexpected death. She reads them

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with the help of her father in order to translate the Bengali words.

This is an attempt to interpret and understand her mother’s life and

Rakhi tries to make sense out of her mother’s death. Rakhi also finds

herself struggling with her business, relationships and the devastating

events relating to 9/11. Rakhi says,

We see clips of firefighters heading into the blaze;

We see the buildings collapsing under the weight of

their own rubble -- We look at them all, then at each

other in disbelief. How could this have happened --

here, at home, in a time of peace? In America?

(QD 255)

Rakhi, is not able to come to terms with the division in her

family’s history, between India and the US. She runs an ethnic-style

coffee shop in Berkely, California with her friend Belle.

Recently divorced, Rakhi does not discuss the reasons for her divorce.

It is Rakhi’s search for meaning and truth that is at the heart of the

novel. She searches for the meaning of what life is. Rakhi tries to

understand her relationship with her father; her friend Belle;

her husband Sonny and her daughter Jona.

Queen of Dreams is also divided between India and the

United States, although set entirely in America. The conflict of ideas

between Mrs. Gupta and Rakhi illustrates the notion that there is

always an inner battle between a first-generation Indian American and

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a second-generation Indian American. Mrs. Gupta’s conciousness is a

cross connection between polarisms. The transfer from her homeland

to foreign land shows the adjustments of the inner conflicts, outer

reality and dislocation. Reading the dream journals of Mrs. Gupta,

Rakhi is faced with many doubts. She thinks: “Did my mother make

the wrong choice in deciding to come to America with my father?”

(QD 211). After reading the journals, Rakhi begins to see what

Mrs. Gupta hid from them so craftly: “her regret, her longing for

community, her fear of losing her gift” (QD 211).

Rakhi thought of her mother as a serene person. But after

reading her journals, she understands that her mother refused to

accept sadness, which she considered an useless emotion.

Mrs. Gupta survived by making herself believing that loneliness was

strength. Rakhi describes her mother as the one who is beautiful and

sad, like a princess from one of the old Bengali tales (QD 200).

In Queen of Dreams, an ethnic coffee outlet, the Chai House,

later renamed as Kurma House, is an embodiment of cultural fusion of

cuisine, music, conversation and myth, assimilating them into the

American mainstream. On a visit to Chai House, Mrs. Gupta tells,

“This isn’t a real cha-shop -- she pronounces the word in the Bengali

way -- but a mishmash, a westerner’s notion of what’s Indian”

(QD 89). This is a perfect congent of Kakar’s concept of assimilation

in American life:

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In the process of convergence the impact of minority

cultures on the mainstream can occur when elements

of their culture are absorbed by Anglo-American

community, thus creating a composite culture.

(Kakar, 1991: 25)

Tilo is the architect of immigrant dream, lifegiver, restorer of

health and hope in The Mistress of Spices. Here, Divakaruni weaves

compelling stories of adversities, defeats and triumphs in the lives of

the characters that populate Tilo’s store and her novel. Some of the

stories reflect the persistent struggles within the Indian diaspora of

North America, like domestic violence, racism, intergenerational

discord and the endless effort to absorb and be absorbed in a new

environment.

Tilo, the mistress of spices, has many disguises and names that

reveal her multiple identities. Like a chameleon, she keeps changing

throughout the novel, making clear how complex is the problem of

identity crisis that Indians try to cope with in a foreign land.

(NayanTara -- Bhagyavati -- Tilotamma -- Maya). The novel comes to

an end with Tilo renaming herself as Maya, which “can mean many

things. Illusion, spell, enchantment, the power that keeps this

imperfect world going day after day” (MS 338). Tilo chooses a name

that can mean many things, a name that embodies the multiplicity of

her identities, the many consciousnesses that lie within her.

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Maya is an ancient Sanskrit name. The juxtaposition of a name

representative of a cultural past with Tilo’s present power suggests

that Tilo still lives in between spheres, with contradictory spaces and

times comprising the rather ambiguous landscape of her existence.

In naming herself, Tilo reveals that she is made of multiple

consciousnesses that allow her to exist neither as south Asian nor

American only, but rather as everything in between. Tilo is living a life

that spans the endless boundaries of space and time and in which

identity is filled with the promise of endless possibility and eternal

evolution.

Divakaruni’s inquiry into transculturalism is at once allusive,

subtle and lyrical which cuts through the Indian stereotypes and

presents the reader with powerful allegories of transformation and

change. For example, “Daksha to whom no one listens so she has

forgetten how to say” (MS 83) is the workhorse in the family hierarchy

of an ageing mother-in-law and a husband who will not help around

the house. Daksha is a nurse in the AIDS Ward. Tilo ministers

Daksha through her spices:

Daksha here is a seed of black pepper to be boiled

whole and drunk to loosen your throat so you can

learn to say No, that word so hard for Indian women.

No, and Hear me Now. (MS 83)

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The story of ten and a half year old Jagjit who is traumatized at

school, “Talk English son-of-bitch. Speak up nigger wetback ass hole”

(MS 93) shows the cultural trauma the young boy undergoes.

At school, he is jeered at and physically harassed for wearing a green

turban; at home, he is rebuked by an impatient mother who refuses to

understand her son’s predicament.

Equally poignant is the story of Mohan who is severely beaten

by skinheads while closing his restaurant for the night. Betrayed by

the American justice when the thugs are acquitted, Mohan smashes

everything that he sees and returns to India a broken man.

The Americans who assaulted Mohan are in their teens. Their

attitude reveals their contempt for Mohan in the following emotional

outburst: “Sonofa-bitch Indian, shoulda stayed in your own goddamn

country” (MS 180). Mohan is terribly hurt. In the hospital he thinks,

But what am I to do with the questions rattling in my

skull-box, will I walk again, how to make a living now,

the right eye, is it totally gone, Veena so young and

pretty left with a crippled scarred husband. And over

and over, Those two haramis, did the police get them,

may they rot in jail. (MS 181)

Mohan is shattered in body and in mind in America.

Neighbours pool together the ticket money to send Mohan and Veena

back home, for nothing is left for them in the United States.

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Divakaruni succeeds in presenting a balanced picture of the world of

immigrants in America. Not all of them are winners, but not all of

them are losers. Jagjit and Mohan are examples of losers.

Daksha and Geeta succeed in transculturalism.

The element of mystery is an integral part of Divakaruni’s work.

She says that her books are partly based on experience, partly on

social observation. Divakaruni strives to narrate her observations

with the element of myth, magic and ancient culture alongside

contemporary culture.

“A dream is a telegram from the hidden world” (QD 34) says the

matriarch in Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams. Indeed, the hidden

world plays an important role in the novel, detailing the story of

Rakhi, a young Indian American woman living in Berkely, California.

Rakhi’s life is spiced with the mystical and the mundane. Her mother

is a dream-teller with a magical ability to foresee the future in her

dreams, a gift that has always mystified and fascinated Rakhi.

Rakhi’s everyday life requires attention to more worldly things

such as bringing up her young daughter, managing her relationship

with her ex-husband and salvaging the business she runs with her

friend Belle. After the death of her mother, Rakhi’s two worlds -- the

mystical and the mundane begin to collide. She must make sense of

the dream journals her mother has left behind with the mysterious

elements of her own life. When the tragic events of 9/11 occur, Rakhi

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is faced with seeking her late mother’s guidance in coming out of the

confusing and terrifying world.

Queen of Dreams explores the connection between wakefulness

and the subconscious in the backdrop of diasporic life. One morning

when Rakhi is about to step out to the car, she sees a bird in the

maple tree, which she has not seen in that part of the state before.

The bird is “large and gray with bright orange mihinda eyes”

(QD 185). The bird watches her intently, without any sign of fear.

She runs inside to get her father, but by the time they return, the bird

is gone.

Could it be an omen? I ask. What’s an omen?

he says. I sigh. I don’t want an argument between us

today, but I know this; the universe does send us

messages. The trouble is most of us don’t know how

to read them. (QD 185)

Thus the novel is also spiked with mystery, suspense and the

supernatural.

The novel Queen of Dreams contrasts the lives and perceptions

of first-generation immigrants with that of their children born and

raised in a foreign land. And inevitably it includes the

Indian-American experience of grappling with two identities. On 9/11

two white men attack Rakhi and her family outside the Chai House.

Rakhi’s feelings about being treated as a hostile alien are poignantly

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delineated. “If I am not American,” she asks, “Who am I”? (QD 270)

Divakaruni drives home the idea that maintaining Indian cultural

heritage and at the same time knowing and participating in the

American culture is important for survival in today’s world. This story

of an emotionally distant mother and a daughter trying to find herself

transcends cultural boundaries. The tale succeeds at two levels.

Divakaruni effectively takes the reader into an immigrant culture and

shows the common ground that lies in an alien land.

Queen of Dreams is an exploration of the relationship between

a mother and daughter. The novel explores the theme of what it

means to be an American, particularly in the immigrant community.

Divakaruni has been interested in the magical parts of Indian culture,

in folk beliefs and age-old traditions and especially in how they are

incorporated into modern times and settings.

In the case of Rakhi’s mother, Divakaruni explores the practice

of the ancient culture of dream telling in a place far away from the

place where she has learnt it. In India a dream teller will have the

support and encouragement not only of her culture, but also of a

circle of fellow dream tellers. In California, despite the vibrant Indian

community, Mrs. Gupta tells her dreams alone. Divakaruni has

written some of the dream chapters and has discovered that she has

to bring the daughter’s voice in, as an important way to communicate,

what it means to be an American, especially for people of culture that

is the Orientals.

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Indian civilization has evolved through centuries of change.

This collective consciousness has been reflected in the expatriate

writings through the rich tradition of myth, social and religious

customs, intermingling with the western ideas and their culture.

Divakaruni has transcended boundaries negotiating two different

worlds drawn from various perspectives. The usual thematic core of

expatriate writing between the native and the alien, the self and the

other seems to have acquired new richness and complexity in the

novelistic vision of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, balancing the various

diversities of being born an Indian, a woman and finally acquiring the

status of an immigrant. Divakaruni has explored the force of tradition

of her native country as well as the challenges faced by the

immigrants in her adopted country.

In The Mistress of Spices, through Tilo she is able to bring

together two diverse worlds of ancient Indian culture and harsh

realities of inner city life in America. It is evident in Tilo’s words when

she says, “I, Tilo architect of the immigrant dream” (MS 29).

The immigrant who carries dreams of aspiration also carries with him

or her, the native identity. A reluctance to shed the identity makes it

difficult to get assimilated in the new home. The natives too are not

ready to accept the immigrants without any reservation. The harsh

reality, besides causing innumerable problems to the co-migrants,

leads to various tensions in the social fabric.

The illusion and reality of American life is brought out thus:

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No one told us it would be so hard here in Amreekah,

all day scrubbling greasy floors, lying under engines

that drip black oil, driving the belching monster trucks

that coat our lungs with tar. Standing behind counters

of dim motels where we must smile as we hand keys to

whores. Yes. always smile, even when people say,

“Bastard foreigner taking over the country stealing our

jobs”. Even when cops pull us over because we’re in

the wrong part the rich part of town. We thought we’d

be back home by now in Trichy, in Kharagpur, in

Bareilly. Under the sweet whirr of a ceiling fan in a

mosaic room with a sea green floor, leaning back on

satin pillows, and the servant bringing the ice-cold

lassi with rose petals floating on it. (MS 65)

Each character tries to accomplish their goals or else they meet

with failures. The rich Indians send lists to Tilo’s shop because they

are busy with their business which will bring them wealth.

Their status does not permit them to spend time in the shop.

They feel that they are richer and hence avoid visiting the shop.

Still others have forgetten their nationality and eat caviar only. For all

of them Tilo burns Tulsi, basil which is the plant of humility, curber of

ego (MS 79), the Basil sacred to Sri Ram, which slakes the craving for

power, which turns the thoughts inward, away from worldliness.

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Each character portrayed in this novel tries to negotiate with the

newly found American culture. Every character is caught up in a web

and is helped by Tilo and her spices. Haroun, a Kashmiri works as a

driver. He is stabbed and Tilo comes to his rescue. She gives a lotus

root that will make Haroun and Hameeda the widow, love each other.

Geeta’s family wants to live as Bengalis in America.

Geeta’s grandfather is ready to undergo anything to make Geeta live

as an Indian girl. Ahuja’s wife Lalita undergoes physical and mental

torture. She says “Who shall I ask to bless me? Ram, who banished

poor pregnant Sita to the forest because of what people might say?

Even our gods are cruel to their wives” (MS 289). Lalita lands up in a

shelter for women. Jagjit, a ten-year-old boy has to wear a turban to

school. As he grows up, he becomes just like an American teenager

with an earring on single ear. Tilo gives him money, to make him

start life anew for which Jagjit says, “Tell her I’m going to give it my

best shot” (MS 109). He is going to use power and not be used by it.

Daksha, who is the nurse has come home to make hot chapattis

for a mother-in-law and a husband who feels “--after all isn’t the

kitchen the woman’s place” (MS 83). Tilo gives Daksha black pepper

to loosen her throat so that she can learn to say No, a word so hard

for an Indian woman. The bougainvillea girls are the Indians of the

upper strata who have turned and who use their Indianness as a sort

of curio. They look out for cardamom and want help “-- because we

don’t know what it looks like” (MS 272). They are provoked to

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laughter when they are asked about simple things like the spices

which are not new to Indians in general.

Tilo the protagonist is forced to choose between the

supernatural life of an immortal and the modern life of an ordinary

mortal. She is a woman with magical powers; she is portrayed as a

living, breathing reality, one of the finest creations by Divakaruni.

She is the structural and magical pivot of the novel, and serves as the

link in the novel. She holds together the various characters and the

events in the novel. She is the uniting and harmonizing force who

feels the needs of everyone who visit her store. The immigrants are

self-willed and self-centered and some of them are eccentrics. It is

nothing but with magic that Tilo weaves them into an adhesive whole.

She has sympathy and consideration for the transplanted Indians in

America. Tilo is thus a symbol of the female principle in life.

The Mistress of Spices may be taken as the anti-thesis of Tilo’s

emotional cycle; the anti-thesis is evoked as her mood soon modulates

into one of grim recognition of the inevitable facts of love and desire

and she gradually descends from her state of triumphant abstraction,

from the fret, the hurry and the stir by seizing upon the web of love

from a different perspective. As a mistress she is restricted to enter

the domain of love and earthly life. Inspite of all the restrictions, she

chooses to go away with Raven.

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Tilo has to decide which part of her heritage she will keep and

which part she will choose to abandon. Tilo’s magical powers begin to

crumble; when she is drawn to the mysterious Raven, the lonely

American, who walks into her store. Raven feels that she is an

“authentic-real Indian” (MS 273). Tilo is unable to penetrate his

psyche and must break all her vows to taste the forbidden fruit.

While the first mother may represent a mythical pull for the security

of one’s cultural and emotional ties to India, the land of birth, the

lonely American becomes the call to explore and forge new identity in

America’s vast multicultural landscape.

The Mistress of Spices reveals the predicament of the

immigrant Indians in America with a very Indian spicy touch.

The chapters are titled as Tilo, Turmeric, Cinnamon, Fenugreek,

Asafoetida, Fennel, Ginger, Peppercorn, Kalojire, Neem, Red chilli, Lotus

root, Sesame and Maya. The chapters begin with Tilo- short for

Tilotama that she had coined for herself and ends with Maya, given by

Raven “One that spans my land and yours, India and America, for I

belong to both now” (MS 337). Tilo concludes by saying, “In the old

language it can mean many things, illusion, spell, enchantment, the

power that keeps this imperfect world going day after day. I need a

name like that I who now have only myself to hold me up” (MS 338).

Divakaruni blends both the metaphysical with the tangible

physical world. The novel Queen of Dreams juxtaposes Mrs. Gupta’s

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numinous world of dreams with the everyday concerns of her

daughter’s life. As Rakhi observes:

To give my mother credit, she never tried to pressure

me into staying with Sonny once I’d decided to leave.

Even though I could never bring myself to tell her why.

-- One more way in which I’m different from my

mother, -- this is why she dreams and I paint. (QD 31)

Dreams look to the future whereas paintings try to preserve the past.

The dream journals render an aura of exoticism. The dreams

themselves take on a poetic feel filled with symbolisms that reveal an

image of exoticised India with its cultural beliefs, the myths and

legends.

If you dream of a closed door, you will ultimately be

successful in gaining what you desire, but it will take

much effort. -- In your dream if someone presents you

with sugar, beware. Such a person is not to be

trusted. (QD 76)

The element of mystery is maintained till the very end with the

recurrent appearance of the snake and a mysterious man in white.

Mrs. Gupta wants her daughter not to hanker for her imagined

India. For Rakhi, India is a place which she wants to visit. As she is

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not able to understand her mother’s nature, she wishes that she will

be able to understand her mother if she comes to India. Hence she

has an assumed picture of India. She tries to exhibit her imagination

in her paintings.

Rakhi borrows from the South Asian library, a tape with songs

about the Bengal monsoons. “how the skies grow into the color of

polished steel, how the clouds advance like black armies, or spill

across the horizon like the unwound hair of beautiful maidens”

(QD 81). She day-dreams about the storm-whipped palm trees, the

red-breasted bulbuls taking shelter among the hanging roots of the

banyan. She recalls: “The lightening was silver combs decorating the

rain maiden’s hair. The rain was warm, like human tears. One of the

singers had compared her heart to a dancing peacock” (QD 82).

Rakhi wonders as to whether there was any truth in that, or

was it merely a poetic trope? When she confronted her mother by a

direct question, her mother grudgingly admitted that there were

peacocks and that from time to time they did dance. Her father

informed her, with “gruesome glee” (QD 82) that Calcutta flooded with

heavy torrential down pours of rains and also people died of cholera.

But Rakhi was not satisfied with her parents’ answers. She thought

that they were hiding ‘beautiful, mysterious, important things’

(QD 82) from her as they always had. Belle had told her that her

parents and the parents of other desis she knew, loved to go on and

on about India, “which in their opinion was as close to paradise as

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you could get” (QD 82). Rakhi desperately remarks, “Still, I think

that before I die I would like to go to India- if only to lay to rest the

ghosts that dance in my head like will-o’-the-wisps over a rippling sea”

(QD 83).

Mrs. Gupta wishes her daughter to get accustomed to her

American way of life and to line in between two nations. She holds

Rakhi responsible for her failing business in the Chai House.

She says:

The reason you don’t have enough power to fight that

woman there is that she knows exactly who she is, and

you don’t. This isn’t a real cha shop but a mismash, a

westerner’s notion of what’s Indian. Maybe that’s the

problem. May be if you can make it into something

authentic, you’ll survive. (QD 89)

Rakhi retorts her mother telling that her haunting silence about

her country and her own past accounts for her “warped sense of

what’s Indian?” (QD 89). Mrs. Gupta admits her fault and offers a

valid explanation for her act thus:

You’re right. It is my fault. I see now that I brought

you up wrong. I thought it would protect you if I didn’t

talk about the past. That way you wouldn’t be

constantly looking back, hankering, like so many

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immigrants do. I didn’t want to be like those other

members spitting you between here and there, between

your life right now and that which can never be.

But by not telling you about India as it really was,

I made it into something far bigger. It crowded other

things out of your mind. It pressed upon your brain

like a tumour (QD 89).

Divakaruni tries to blend the orient and the occident through

the character of Rakhi. Rakhi, feeling too American and seeking out a

more authentic Indian identity, is a manifestation of her love and

loyalty torn between her imagined homeland and the country of her

birth.

Small Indian immigrant audiences who visit the shop regularly

demanding Mr. Gupta to sing songs from some old Hindi movies

underline their constant effort to build the lost boundaries in the host

space, America. It also helps them to preserve their cultural

hangovers which have been often dwindled by the dominant culture.

In an attempt to overcome the identity crisis with all its complexities,

they feel, as Kateryna Arthur writes in Aboriginal and Immigrant

Writing (1985), “The necessity to construct a new self and world, not

in a vaccum, but against and in contradiction to constructions already

imposed by the dominant culture”. (123)

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Queen of Dreams is a tale of east-west encounter. It is a story

of how a woman touches those around her during her life and into

death. The focus is on family, relationships, pride in one’s heritage,

and how one may not truly understand another as well as one thinks.

The funeral of Mrs. Gupta was held at the Valley View Funeral Home,

a squat beige building of a freeway. When Rakhi looks at the

gathering, she wants to say something to them; something consoling

and meaningful, for they are her mother’s true family, her mother’s

orphans. Rakhi says,

-- What could I tell them? They knew her better than

I did; they knew her in her essence. Until now I’d held

on to the hope that someday I would know her, --

I realized that it was never going to happen.

My mother’s secret self was lost to me forever.

(QD 114)

Things change when Mrs.Gupta dies in the tragic automobile

accident. The dynamics of some of Rakhi’s important relationships

change forever. She notices her father for the first time, and he is not

the same indifferent man as he used to be. Earlier she felt, “I cannot

remember a single instance in my life when I felt close to him”

(QD 115). After Mrs. Gupta’s death it is only through her father that

Rakhi learns about her parent’s past. Her father helps her in her chai

business. Together they read her mother’s journal. This is an act that

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changes both of them forever. She also finds in her a maturing

relationship with Sonny, while she herself is changing and growing

too.

Rakhi invites Sonny and cooks for him -- something she had

vowed she would never do again. But she feels warmth in cooking in

her small kitchen, Jona and Sonny and herself crowded around the

countertop, chopping green onions and sautéing chicken with ginger.

One night she finds herself thanking Sonny for saving her life.

The novel speaks about the possibility of salvaging relationships, if

one chooses to forgive and move on -- as Rakhi does with her father

and ex-husband. To forgive and to forget is again an Indian way of

life.

In a tragic way the aftermath of 9/11 pushes Rakhi into

maturity and a new vision for herself. India becomes little more than

a myth after the terrorist attack on America. She and her family love

India and yet it is also the key to their past and present lives.

“There would always be mysteries about the people -- enigmas central

to their lives -- Love worked its slanted way along other paths”

(QD 290-291).

Rakhi understands the ways of life. She has understood her

father’s affection; Sonny’s love and her daughter’s affection.

Her daughter Jona, has inducted the characteristics of both her

grandmother, Mrs. Gupta and that of her mother, Rakhi; She can

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dream and also paint. Jona is an enigmatic character.

Rakhi observes:

With her grandmother dead and her mother

overwhelmed, painting must have given her stability.

A way to express her emotions. I observe the care with

which she delineates details. The windows of the tall

building gleam in the light from the flames.

-- The sky, too, is full of fire. It’s hard to wrench my

eyes from the strangely magnetic quality of the

painting. (QD 212)

The experiences of migration and living in diaspora have been

beautifully portrayed in Queen of Dreams. In Rakhi, Divakaruni has

combined the feelings of an immigrant who has an oriental past and

tries to live up to the occidental ethos. The character grows from

questioning many aspects of what is happening around her to a state

where she is ready to accept the reason behind all happenings.

Rakhi raises her voice against mental trauma, cultural alienation and

identity crisis of the dislocated people from their homeland India.

The act of acculturation usually involves a conscious erasure of

one’s identity in order to merge with the mainstream. The process of

acculturation is successful only when it follows the painful erasure of

the cultural hangovers. In talking about her mother, Rakhi creates a

new identity. Tilo, on the other hand possesses many identities at one

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time, yet she seems comfortable with her changing personalities which

allows her the freedom to assimilate while at the same time retain the

aspects of Indian culture that she wishes to preserve. The multiplicity

can be viewed as a form of Americanization; but it more aptly

describes the new form of assimilation.

Rakhi’s terrible sense of alienation and homelessness create the

impetus that forces Rakhi into the necessary changes to get her life

back on track. She attempts to acculturate to the alien country.

This results in the erasure of the painful, unpleasant incidents with

her husband and her family from the mind. Towards the end, Rakhi

begins to question her most basic assumptions and motives, the true

nature of love and the capacity to forgive, to re-kindle her love for her

husband and her family, and eventually her own community.

The dynamics of some of Rakhi’s important relationships are changed

in the phase between her identity crisis and acculturation.

Divakaruni has yoked together beautifully the diasporic reality with

myths from the ancient culture (India) within a woman-centered social

environment in America.

The characters in these two novels are in search of their true

image, torn between the traditional values they have absorbed from

childhood and the new values which they have been introduced due to

their immigration. This is a confrontation with the occidental ethos in

order to discover one’s own self. In the novel The Mistress of Spices,

Tilo’s quest for her personal destiny is a result of the impact of the

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west on her. Renunciation is an Indian way of life. It is a distinctly

difficult condition, attainable only by a very few. Tilo renounces all

her happiness, in order to help the immigrants in America, and wishes

to cure both their physical and mental illness. When Tilo chooses to

go away with Raven, she renounces renunciation. Thus the novelist

has succeeded in the portrayal of the spiritual east encountering the

materialistic west.

Much of immigrant fiction deals with the phantom umbilical

cord tying one to desh, the dual sense of home -- desh, the homeland

and bari, the place of residence. In Divakaruni’s novel

Queen of Dreams all the main characters are Bengalis; their desh is

America. Divakaruni’s characters settle down in America.

Queen of Dreams is a novel about three generations -- Rakhi, a single

mother in Berkely who has grown up in the United States, her

immigrant mother and her unquestionably American daughter, Jona.

Expatriate writing occupies a significant position between

cultures and countries. There is a need to realize the significance of

the cultural encounter which takes place in diasporic writing, the

bi-cultural pulls and the creation of a new culture which finally

emerges. In the novels taken up for study Divakaruni has portrayed

the fusion of the oriental and occidental cultures. The desh-pardesh

syndrome, so typical of all diasporic writers, finds a different

exposition in the works of Divakaruni, who has managed to find a

bridge between the two cultures. Though Divakaruni lives in the

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United States, her work is imbued with Indian culture and

sensibilities.

The novels The Mistress of Spices and Queen of Dreams are

good examples of Divakaruni’s blending of the oriental values with the

occidental ethos. The very idea of diasporic literature conveys two

dimensions of relationships: One, the relationship to its motherland,

which gives rise to nostalgia and reminiscences; second, the forged

relationship with the new land and its people, which give rise to

conflicts and split personalities. Dislocations are a natural offshoot of

diasporic conditions, which have to be dealt with by way of embedding

and assimilation. In contemporary society, diasporic status is an

inherent reality which is dealt with artistically by Divakaruni.

In an interview with the Nirali magazine, Divakaruni has said,

“my hope is that the books will bridge the cultures”. Her characters

are the inheritors of the Indian-American hyphenated community, a

new identity to accommodate and assimilate. Chitra Banerjee

Divakaruni is firmly rooted to her culture and by her continuing

existence in the American soil, she assimilates the new cultural life

style -- i.e. -- the fusion of both the cultures.

The search for identity and a sense of emotional completion is

not confined to small corners of the world. It is a dilemma that all

human beings can understand. Divakaruni effectively takes the

reader into an immigrant culture in the two novels, The Mistress of

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Spices and Queen of Dreams; she also shows the common ground

which lies in a world that is alien. Confrontation with the west for the

discovery of one’s own self is evident through the characters of Tilo

and Rakhi. This search constitutes a quest for a satisfactory attitude

towards the west, and for a realistic image of the east. The fusion of

the western and eastern cultures is beautifully brought out by the

novelist.

Apart from the melting of the two cultures, Divakaruni succeeds

in presenting the complex consciousness of the South Asian diasporic

women and the process of identity formation. In the novels Sister of

My Heart and The Vine of Desire, Divakaruni tries to explore the

psyche of the characters, Anju and Sudha. In the following chapter

Divakaruni, presents to the readers the struggle, tribulations and

subordination faced by two Indian born girls and how they find their

independence and empowerment.