In a scented shop situated in California, Tilo (Aishwarya Rai) is the mistress who works her magic.

Tilo draws on ancient wisdom to make remedies from fenugreek, lotus root, chillies, cinnamon roots, plants and powders from all over the world to cure heartache, banish bad luck and rescue the evil from one's personal life.

Tilo's little shop is open and constantly visited by some of the residents in the neighbourhood.

There is Haroun (Nitin Ganatra), the taxi driver with a dark cloud over his future; Geeta (Padma Lakshmi), the woman in love with a forbidden man and Jagjit (Sonny Gill Dulay), the adolescent drifting from his family into a life full of corruption.

Beautiful Tilo has a remedy for everyone, as long as she abides by the rules of her craft.

She can only use her powers for others and not herself. She is never to leave the spice shop and never to touch the skin of her clients or for matter of fact any human being.

All this seems simple, until she meets an American man (Dylan McDermott) who tempts her far beyond her boundaries.

She falls in love resulting in her loss of powers.

Mistress Of Spices is adapted from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's famous novel.

Here, director Paul Mayeda Berges and producer Gurinder Chadha use spices to excite the senses and heal the spirit. In the novel, Tilo takes the shape of an old woman and a young beautiful woman.

In this celluloid version she is an old soul who takes the form of a beautiful woman in the form of Aishwarya Rai.