 A baby girl is born in a destitute family in India, who regard her birth as a dowry-debt. This child grows up, and her parents realize that she is special with powers to find lost things as well as forecast calamities. Bandits come to know of her existence, and in their quest for wealth, abduct her, but she manages to escape and lands on a shoreline where a woman is teaching young girls how to be mistress of spices. She is inducted into this group, and named Tilo. She is mistress of Sesame seeds, and like all others must follow the 3 Dictums to wit: look after desires of others; never leave the spice store; and never touch anyone else s skin. Tilo is then trained to walk over fire, and control her senses. When she matures, she is placed in charge of a store  Spice Bazaar  in San Francisco, where she caters to an older Indian man called Dadaji, a male named Kwesi, a woman named Myisha, a taxi-driver named Haroun Rehman, Jagjit and his mother, as well as a man named Doug and his girlfriend. She prepares special spices and mixes them to improve their lives. Tilo starts to get attracted to Doug, breaking the first rule; she also leaves the store to visit Haroun, and she starts to feel - thus breaking all the sacred rules. Watch what impact this has on her customers, and on her very life herself.