A ‘Spicy’ Feast of Fantasy
Prashanth Srivatsa’s The Spice Gate as a spectacular debut fantasy, a feast to the readers who slurp on worldbuilding, while also making them wonder if a freer world is possible
Even in the portrayal of similar systems of oppression, there are stark differences between literary fiction and epic fantasy. Literary fiction is likely to keep readers tethered to its believability, by our experience of the world we live in. Epic fantasy, meanwhile, keeps us tethered to the impossibility of its existence in the very world. For the former to showcase the defiance of institutions of any kind, it must be rooted in a reality where the readers validate it by their view of the world—and its possibilites. For the latter, however, the reader simply must be convinced that the possibilities of their lived realities are irrelevant, where anything can be believable, as long as it’s rooted in the reality of the invented world.
There is, thus, a delight in fantasy, which can whisk the reader away into the themes and politics of these invented worlds. Prashanth Srivatsa’s debut novel The Spice Gate (HarperVoyager, 2024) is right up this alley from its opening page.
When the story begins, we meet Amir, a spice-carrier from the kingdom of Raluha, standing in front of a spice gate. Despite his years of experience as a carrier, he dreads the pain every carrier suffers from when they enter the gate to deliver the spices to other kingdoms. We soon learn that his world is divided into the abovefolks and the untouchable gatecastes—of which some are born with a spice mark on their throat, destined to become carriers and undergo the pain inflicted upon them. Amir, tired of the pain and suffering, has one goal: to create a better life for his pregnant mother and young brother, Kabir, who was also born with the spice mark. In the black market, there’s a buzz about the Poison that allows abovefolks to travel through the gates, often only used by the royal families to travel for celebrations across kingdoms. Amir’s hopes to obtain a vial of Poison for his mother, so that he can take his family to the Black Coves where the savior of gatecastes—a pirate, Ilangovan—resides, and has created a community away from the laws of the spice trade. It is a place where the gatecastes of eight kingdoms are “just men and women (179)” irrespective of who they are in those kingdoms.
At its heart, The Spice Gate is an anti-establishment story of a person from the lowermost caste, whose role in the society is glorified for the benefit of the abovefolks.
In the absence of his father who had abandoned the family when Amir was a child, he finds a friend and confidante in the Karim bhai, an elderly carrier who doesn’t question the scriptures or the role into which he is born. Karim bhai doesn’t dream of freedom and a life where he is treated as an equal, and yet, his experience bestows wisdom on Amir when he needs it the most. In his hunt for the Poison, Amir finds his life changing in ways that he could not have imagined. He is chosen by the god, Mouth, to kill the one who is a threat to the ways of the world as everyone knew it. In return, he is promised a vial of Poison for his family to have a safe passage through the gates.
“The Mouth teaches us the lay of the land…” says Kalay, a devout of the Mouth, the subverted God in the world of The Spice Gate:
“and how things must be structured for a future to be sustained. The priests in whom the Mouth has instilled the scriptures, the thronekeepers and the warriors who maintain order and equity, the merchants who conduct the Spice Trade, and the velayas who perform the menial tasks. And finally, you [Amir, gatecaste]—whose duty is to traverse the Spice Gates, the child of the Mouth, the one who has been gifted to see the eight kingdoms while the others must remain confined to where they were born.” (353)
The promise of a better future leads Amir down the path where he feels betrayed by his lover, Harini, the princess of Halmora. He learns to pick up a sword hesitantly by Kalay, an acolyte of the Uyirsena, which is an army dedicated to killing anyone to preserve the secret of Poison and Mouth from the kingdoms. Amir uncovers the truth about his father, and finds himself looking at alternate possibilities for the spice trade in kingdoms without oppressing the lowermost caste.
The world of The Spice Gate is rooted in spices. It is crucial to the kingdoms; it is the element of power and oppression. And it is crucial to the narration, for every description has spice or food in it. Everyday elements are defamiliarized to take centre stage. For instance, “The medallion was as light as an idli in his hands” (57), “sizzling voice in his head, like too much mustard allowed to fry in a chetti of coconut oil” (63), “His dreams, his hopes, always hanging by a thread, like food on the cusp of going stale” (260). The motif does begin to feel repetitive, but one can only awe in the seeming-improvisation of Srivatsa’s proverbs, such as, “The turmeric is also yellow on the other plate.” (260)
At its heart, The Spice Gate is an anti-establishment story of a person from the lowermost caste, whose role in the society is glorified for the benefit of the abovefolks. The spice carriers are the only ones who can pass through the spice gates to deliver spices, but rarely do they have access to the same spices to be used in the preparation of their food. The abundance and delicacies of spices are limited to the abovefolks.
The novel’s narration takes place in Amir’s third-person point of view. Amir loves spices and food, and is aware of many usages and details about them albeit not as much as Karim bhai. Srivatsa guides his character and the reader through passages and beautiful kingdoms, while also bounding them to look at the reality of the caste system around them.
Srivatsa doesn’t shy away from further probing the complexities of caste in his discomforting descriptions of manual scavenging. Just when the reader is completely immersed in this magical world, the experiences of untouchables in the society surface:
He glanced at Damini, swabbing the floor with her mop that had already turned brown. He couldn’t look at it for longer than a moment, and yet she was one of his. A product of a society that wanted bowlers only to clean their toilets, unclog the sewage, beat the drums at funerals, shepherd the goats on land owned by the abovefolk, and work at the tanneries. And of course, lest he forget, the greatest of jobs—to suffer the incomparable pain of walking through the Spice Gate. (82)
As the plot progresses, readers will likely note the relationship between state politics, military, and religion, depending on the decisions made by the most powerless person in the world: Amir. However, quite a lot of the fantasy’s twists and turns rest on the indecision of its characters. Srivatsa skilfully shapes the different character arcs of Amir, Kalay, and Karim bhai, as their worldviews are challenged—and in certain instances, broken.
Another intriguing factor in this tale is how foes are bound together. Amir’s one true enemy is Hasmin—the chief of chowkidars in Raluha—an abovefolk who detests gatecastes to the point that he would rather die than touch them. So, when the king of Raluha, Orbalun, puts them together on a journey to discover a secret, the ensuing action between them and the free gatecastes of Black Coves becomes a delightful action sequence that for a moment feels like justice for the oppressed.
Simultaneously, Kalay, a devout, accompanies Amir, an atheist. Having lived a privileged life of being royalty and military, Kalay firmly believes in the roles associated with different sects of people in the scriptures. When she comes face to face with the reality through Amir’s lived experiences, her faith is shaken. She finds herself confused when Amir tells her that passing through the spice gates is not the same as the privilege of traveling across the kingdoms. The carriers’ lives do not entail sightseeing as Kalay might want to believe.
Scenes such as these highlight The Spice Gate as a spectacular debut fantasy, a feast to the readers who slurp on worldbuilding... With every turn, one is bound to slow down and savour on the ideas of home, love, freedom, perseverance and resilience, hero worship, religion, military fascism, and oppression
The motives of the various characters differ even as they band together for a mission. Hasmin is bound by his duty to Orbalun, and Kalay is dedicated to carry out Amir’s task lest he fails to do what the Mouth has chosen him to do. Their worldviews are challenged: testing the steadfastness of some, while pushing others on to a different path. It is this diversity that keeps the characters relevant, in a story in which worldbuilding reigns supreme.
With so much detail, little is left for the reader’s imagination. Srivatsa provides all the elements for a lavish feast. The reader is left to assemble these elements to adapt the scene on the page to experience the satisfaction that follows a sumptuous meal. I often found myself wishing to join Amir’s quest for Poison, if only to traverse the different kingdoms: the bazar of Vanasi, the qila in Halmora, the silent social world of Amarohi, the rivers of Mesht.
Srivatsa’s descriptions are particularly vivid in descriptions of the various kingdoms and settings. For instance, he writes:
Jhanak had been erected against a great mountainside, sprawling across its foot. Homes and markets built into caves, its palace trying to carve itself out of the very mountain it lay ensconced in; its turrets and towers great ballistic pillars crawling out of a cliff. On the other end, the city’s carpet of settlements and lanes swept into the bay, into a wide port where more than a hundred boats lay moored with a cluster of sails fluttering overhead, squabbling for space. The jetties and piers were alive with shouts of sailors and haggling merchants with too much cargo on their decks. A perpetual rabble of chaos reigned on those salty streets. Karim bhai had quipped that Jhanak was full of folks so stupid that if they wished to do evil, they wouldn’t know how. The air was loaded with vapours along that unwholesome coast, and it contained nothing worthy but the little twigs of cinnamon roosting in everyone’s pocket and in their batters and pies.” (136)
When there are kingdoms, military, and secrets at loose, action sequences are bound to unfold. These scenes between the thronekeepers, the armies, and the gatecaste are well choreographed and jewelled with emotional inquiry and revelations about the characters. As Amir moves from the kingdoms to the outerlands where no man is known to live, we meet the Immortal Sons of Mouth, the who do not allow human existence in those areas. Closer to the grand climax, mere humans battle the large mythical birds and serpents who do the Mouth’s bidding.
Scenes such as these highlight The Spice Gate as a spectacular debut fantasy, a feast to the readers who slurp on worldbuilding. It is a book that reveals many secrets and defies giving in to cliches at the turn of the page. And with every turn, one is bound to slow down and savour on the ideas of home, love, freedom, perseverance and resilience, hero worship, religion, military fascism, and oppression.
It is also a dream of a freer world, a dream of a home “where one could rest their limbs and snore to their heart’s content,” a place that can offer Amir “the unbinding of his soul” (380).
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Akankshya Abismruta is a creative writer and independent book reviewer based in Sambalpur. She has been published on various digital platforms and in Indian newspapers. You can find her on Instagram: @geekyliterati and Twitter: @geekyliterati.
