The Spice Route: Memory in a Grain of Masala
Every time I meet Richy Dave — fierce, luminous, and steady as a compass — I am reminded of a story the world has heard countless times, and yet one that always feels new. Richy’s venture, Tulua, is more than a spice brand. It is a kind of listening post. Bay Leaves from Himachal Pradesh, Mustard Seeds from Rajasthan and Kashmiri Chilli from the valley, Tulua gathers spices not as commodities but as storytellers — each seed, each bark, each pod carrying in it the perfume of a place and the pulse of a people. She insists on sourcing with dignity, giving farmers their due, restoring to spices the gravitas they once held when entire empires rose and fell in their pursuit. It is in Tulua’s range that the whole enormity of the spice route seems to condense.
When the World Turned Its Compass Towards India
The “spice route” is often reduced to a neat dotted line across oceans in school atlases. But in truth, it was the bloodstream of the ancient world. As early as 2000 BCE, peppercorns from India were discovered in the nostrils of Pharaoh Ramses II, placed there as part of embalming rituals. Roman writers spoke of black pepper, piper nigrum, costing its weight in silver.
By the 7th century, Arab traders had made the Malabar coast their anchor, ferrying cardamom and cinnamon into the Mediterranean. Ibn Battuta described Calicut’s markets as seas of fragrance — the air itself heavy with ginger, turmeric, and pepper. In 1498, when Vasco da Gama anchored at Calicut, he was not “discovering” a new world but chasing an old desire — the pungent fire of pepper that had bewitched Europe for centuries.
India was not sought for its diamonds, nor its silks, nor its gold. It was sought for the things that scented its kitchens.
Food as the First Cultural Marker
Food precedes painting, architecture, even language — for before we drew on cave walls, we foraged, cooked, and seasoned. Food is our first shared memory, the inheritance that binds generations. Spices — dried, ground, preserved — are the vessels of this inheritance. A grandmother’s turmeric-stained fingers are no less a manuscript than a palm-leaf text; a pinch of asafoetida in dal is as encoded an archive as any scripture. To speak of the spice route, then, is not to speak of commerce alone, but of how taste becomes history.
Masala: The Grammar of Indian Life
India is not merely the land of spices — it is the land of masala. The word itself means “mixture,” a reminder that nothing here is ever singular.
A masala is history ground fine: black pepper from the Malabar, cloves from the Moluccas, chillies from the Americas (a 16th-century migrant), all folded into turmeric, cumin, and coriander. In masala, geography dissolves. It is not about origins but about alchemy. The masala is India’s philosophy in edible form: plurality, layering, contradiction, harmony. Every home makes its own; every family guards its blend.
It is no accident that when Anand Ahuja designed a sneaker for Fila and named it “Masala,” it felt instantly resonant. The masala is more than seasoning. It is India’s most democratic idea.
Where the Spice Route Was Written
The story of spice is not preserved only in ledgers or treaties but in manuscripts, miniatures, and letters.
Mughal miniatures show trays of saffron and pepper laid out alongside goblets of wine, signifying wealth.
Portuguese chroniclers arriving in Kerala wrote of “golden powders” traded in bazaars dense with clove and ginger.
Arab geographers like Al-Biruni and Ibn Battuta recorded the spice markets of Malabar with a lyricism that feels almost like perfume trapped in ink.
European cookbooks — the Liber de Coquina (14th-century Naples) and Bartolomeo Scappi’s Renaissance recipes — mention cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon as if they were sacred imports, each traceable to India’s soil.
Spices were not only consumed. They were painted, prayed, written, and sung into history.
Recipes of Confluence
Spices traveled not only through ships but through kitchens, creating new languages of taste.
Sorpotel in Goa began as a Portuguese pork stew infused with vinegar; in India it met garam masala and red chilies, becoming fiercely Goan.
The Mughlai korma married Central Asian slow-braising with Indian cardamom and mace.
Vindaloo derives from the Portuguese vinho e alho (wine and garlic), but Indian chilies gave it its soul.
Even chai — a colonial commodity — was reinvented in the 20th century with cardamom, ginger, and cloves, becoming India’s most beloved ritual.
Each such dish is a palimpsest — a manuscript overwritten with migration, conquest, and longing.
India Today: Still the Land of Masala
The appetite for spice has not dimmed. India remains the largest producer, consumer, and exporter of spices, with more than 75 varieties thriving across its soil: pepper vines in Kerala, saffron in Kashmir, cumin in Rajasthan, cardamom in the Ghats.
But beyond statistics lies something greater: the cultural force of spice. In diaspora kitchens in Durban, London, Kuala Lumpur, in Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris or New York, Indian masalas continue to breathe. Food remains India’s most powerful export — less visible than gold or software, but infinitely more enduring.
The Confluence
Each time I see Richy, I am reminded that the spice route is not over. It still runs through us — in Tulua’s boxes, in turmeric-stained palms, in the swirl of masala that thickens dal. The story of spice is, above all, the story of confluence: of seas crossed, empires stirred, manuscripts inked, recipes rewritten. To taste spice is to taste history itself — fragrant, bitter, sweet, fiery, layered. Food, after all, is the first cultural marker. And masala, perhaps, is India’s most enduring script.
Such a well written piece! 👏👏