Spice Corridors is a three-part book told from the points of view of two main characters, a young woman and a boy.
When Maya Ray finds herself suddenly orphaned, she has no option but to mend her aimless ways and take charge of her life. Her first job as nanny is a disaster and as she leaves behind her adorable little ward and his handsome father, she has no place to go to and no one to turn to. Thwarted in love, lacking in feminine attributes and on the wrong side of twenty-five, Maya decides to turn a writer of cook books to support herself.
As she sets off on a culinary trail spanning the length and breadth of the entire country, she finds herself unwittingly plumbing the darkest depths of her own psyche. As she begins writing her dairy of multicultural cuisines, her research takes her into the innermost labyrinths of a zamindar home in Calcutta where family secrets loom dark and deep, where relationships are warped and twisted and where residents of the sprawling house walk around in the dead of night on strange missions.
Benares beckons with its burning ghats, the human flesh eaters (the Aghoris) and the incredible array of traditional foods: a city where death and food dance an eternal and macabre tango. Maya chugs up the Matheran mountains next, to collect recipes from a Parsi hotelier and traipses through villages and towns in her quest for regional food recipes. In the process, she finds herself stumbling into dark histories and complex gender and societal dynamics. Pagan rituals of the rural belt leave her shocked while the hospitality of total strangers is disarming. Her diary cleaves into two distinct sections, one which holds meticulously gathered recipes and the other which contains Maya's private observations of life. One cookery book follows another and soon she is an established writer.
J. D is a juvenile delinquent on the run from a remand home. Living on the fringes of society and with dubious characters as his friends, guides and mentors, J. D, at 17, discovers the forbidden pleasures that lurk in the underbelly of every town and city. His travels with his little group of friends are full of delightful misadventures as he totters from one learning experience to the other. Motherless, rudderless, confused and angry with the world at large, J.D finally arrives at destination Bombay on a day of communal riots.
The lives of the two characters run parallel and unconnected till both of them land in the city of Bombay around the same time. Maya ambles along the streets of Bombay on a day in the month of Ramadan hoping to glean recipes and information revolving around iftar. When violence erupts unexpectedly, she is caught in the vortex of the storm. Fleeing along unfamiliar alleys clutching onto her precious diary, she is finally cornered. When a young boy erupts onto the scene as her saviour, she is filled with a sense of Deja vu. Where has she seen this youngster before? J.D, likewise, feels a sense of kinship with the slim woman lying bleeding in his arms. Maya recognizes her little ward, now a teenager. J.D is unsure, feeling a strange tug at his heart as half-forgotten childhood incidents suddenly run rampant in his mind. As the sun sets over a riot-torn city, the aging writer of cook books and the juvenile delinquent, locked in each other's arms, find them themselves travelling a strange path down memory lane.