Mistress of Spices

I stumbled across this fantastic movie at Blockbuster not too long ago and being enamoured with all aspects of herbs and spices, the name, of course, caught my attention right away. Mistress of Spices...the title conjured up associations that flashed through my mind as quickly as bullets from a machine gun: erotic, exotic, heat, spicy, sweet, mysterious, flagrant, earthy, musky, sharp. I rented the movie and watched it as soon as I got home and was not disappointed. Wiki does a great job of explaining the plot of the movie:

Tilo is an immigrant from India, and a shopkeeper, who is also the Mistress of Spices. The spices she gives to her customers help them to satisfy their needs and desires, such as "sandalwood to dispel painful memories; black cumin seed to protect against evil eye."

As a young girl, Tilo was initiated as one of several young Mistresses of Spices by a First Mother who warns the girls about rules they must follow, or face consequences. They are instructed never to leave their respective stores all around the world, touch the skin of the people they meet or use the spices to their own ends.

Tilo ends up in San Francisco in a store called "Spice Bazaar". Tilo's customers include Haroun, a cab-driver from Kashmir (Nitin Ganatra, a grandfather dealing with an American-born granddaughter Geeta, Kwesi, a man trying to impress his girlfriend and Jagjit, a teenager trying to fit in at school.

Her life takes a turn one day, when a man on a motorcycle (Dylan McDermott), crashes outside her store. Tilo tends to his injuries, while trying to ignore their mutual attraction. Her life changes when he touches her and they begin to fall in love. This man, Doug, is an American and an architect.

But the spices are jealous, and things soon start to go sour in her relationships with her other customers. Haroun gets in an accident, Geeta's family situation does not improve, Jagjit falls in with the wrong crowd at school, and Kwesi's girlfriend breaks up with him. Doug comes to meet her that night and tells her that his mother died.

Tilo recognizes that the source of these misfortunes is her breaking of the rules. The First Mother comes to her in a vision and chastises her. She vows that she will return to India, and posts a notice about a closing sale. She goes all out to help her customers one last time and tells the spices that she will spend just one night with Doug, and then she will give herself totally to them. She closes the store and goes off with Doug for the night. After a sweet night of love-making, she leaves him a note that she must leave and cannot return, but she will always love him. Then she goes back to the store and sets the spices on fire, with her at the center of the flames.
Doug comes searching for her, and finds the store ashambles, and Tilo is still there, alive and barely conscious. There is no sign of a fire, but there was an earthquake. We see a vision of the First Mother sitting at the beach, telling her that since she demonstrated her willingness to give up everything for the spices, now she can have everything and they will never desert her again. Doug agrees to help her rebuild the store, and she reunites with him.

I mean, come on...who doesn't love a good love story? But this one, there's something about it that just inspires me to stay true to my dream, to have my own herbal shop - to be my own Mistress of Spice.