Spice Narratives and the Triguna: An Integrated Semiotic–Narrative Analysis of Ayurvedic Psychology in The Mistress of Spices

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_36How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Ayurvedic psychology; Triguna theory; narrative analysis; spices; Indian Knowledge Systems; food narratives; cultural psychology

Abstract

Mistress of Spices is a romantic drama movie released in 2006 that was directed by Paul Mayeda Berges. The novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakarunj served as the inspiration for this film. Mistress of Spices is a romantic drama movie that was released in 2006. This movie is directed by Paul Mayeda Berges and based on the novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The story revolves around the character named Tilo, who is played by Aiswarya Rai, an immigrant from India who runs a spice shop in San Francisco. Tilo has a unique, magical connection with spices and uses them to help her customers overcome personal struggles. This movie blends the elements of magical realism, romance, and immigrant experiences. It focuses on tradition, belongingness, and self-discovery. It has a rich feature of spicy rituals and Indian traditions. This study examines the representation of spices through the lens of Ayurvedic psychology’s Triguna theory, which is considered part of “Mansa dosha” that helps to understand the formation of psychological features and predisposition to mental health conditions and personality traits. The three gunas are Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. From the movie, spice depiction scenes are chosen and within that we have tried to analyse semiotic and narrative analysis. For this, we used Barthe’s semiotic framework that is denotation, connotation and myths. We also incorporated coding of triguna theory based on the Ayurvedic textual descriptions. After that narrative mapping was done locating these scenes within the movie. This is further developed by thematic interpretation linking plot events to classical Ayurvedic principles and cultural meanings. The findings are expected to reveal a pattern in how the movie has its transition between guna states, often using the spices as character development. This also shows how these transitions reflect the broader cultural and psychological narratives of healing, desires, and identity.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Anakha
AU  - T. Shikhila
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
TI  - Spice Narratives and the Triguna: An Integrated Semiotic–Narrative Analysis of Ayurvedic Psychology in The Mistress of Spices
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 425
EP  - 439
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_36
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_36
ID  - 2026
ER  -