The Mistress of Spices

Brush the surface with your hand , and the silky yellow powder will cling to the pads of your palm, to your fingertips. Dust from a butterfly wings.
Bring it to your face. Rub it on cheek, forehead,chin. Don't be hesitant. For thousands years before history began, brides and those who long to be brides- have done the same. It will erase blemishes and wrinkles, suck away age and fat. For days afterwards, your skin will give off a pale golden glow.
Each spice has a day special to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter coloured into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.
I am turmeric who rose out of the ocean of milk when the devas and asuras churned for the treasures of the universe. I am turmeric who came after the nectar and before the poison and thus lie in between.

..The dry chili, lanka, is the most potent of spices. In blister-red skin, the most beautiful.Its the other name for danger. The chili sings in the voice of a hawk circling sun-bleached hills where nothing grows: I lanka was born of agni, god of fire. I dripped from his fingertips to bring taste to this bland earth.
Lanka, I think I am most in love with you.
...Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out.Day of sucide, day of murder.

Lanka , whose name the ten headed Ravan took for his enchanted kingdom. City of million jewels turned out at the last to ash.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni