Silk Road Delights: My Journey to Find the Spice of Life by Punita Arora

Posted On: Tuesday, November 25, 2014

I came to form my spice business by way of the world outside of business, and my perspective flows from my journey, mixing what I have learned from the classroom of Life and in my mother’s kitchen, to make spiced butter crunch, a sweet blend of old and new.

I studied history and hoped to build a career exploring how traditional cultures influenced each other over the ages.  Trade, exchange of religious ideas, and diffusion of languages are some of the historical outcomes of a human quest to leave home and search for new things.

I have always been fascinated by this desire and its impact over time; it is a hole in the heart that is filled with new ways of thinking, experiences, and things accumulated from places visited.  One’s heart becomes full and hungers for more, forming a process like a turning wheel that becomes a way of life.  We hear encouraging voices around us, “Never stop dreaming”; “Reach for the stars”; and “Follow your desire”; as advice to embrace that hole in our hearts, to find our inner wheel, turning it to reach our goals.

The hole in the heart is the hole at the center of the wheel, and it is the Sky.  I learned in a college-level Sanskrit course that this particular view is reflected in many essential words and the ideas behind them.  Indeed, the wheel, or the Chakra, is at the center of the Indian flag; it is a means of transporting one from here to there.  So, the vehicle to go to a different place resides in the blue sky of possibility, if only we imagine what might be “over there”.

But, to follow one’s desires and dreams and to build skills requires courage premised on a willingness to falter and fail.  We have to embrace our vulnerability and be willing to fall to the ground, to get lost, and to come home with empty hands; knowing all along that the experience makes us all the richer.  This too is an aspect of emptiness, of the heart’s hole, the wide possibility of the sky, and of the bowl that holds a full spirit.  How we view emptiness depends on a mindset, a mood, to see something where there is nothing and to go forward because one believes in something, just because.

I chose to read about other people’s journeys long ago that ushered worlds of possibility for people thereafter.  I see my family’s story as a thread in that huge fabric that individual people stitched by leaving their home to go somewhere, because of a belief or a desire.  In my parents’ case, they left their home in India, fueled by their desire to pursue new opportunities in the United States.  They traveled far, by plane, to follow a dream.  And one day, they landed from their trip in the sky to chase their own Stars represented in the flag of their new home!

I explored histories to learn how my family’s story fits in to that big fabric.  As a young child, I was sustained by my mother’s spicy food and expressed myself first in a language from far away.  I learned to merge these ways of living, eating, speaking, and being over the years; mixing this and that from here and there, to follow my own dream for something else…in my life, and this is how I came to the world of business.

My journey to a different career path is a version of parents’ journey to a different country.  Indeed, this is what we do when Life opens a door to see the world outside the confines of our usual ways, and we develop a concept, a habit, a way of thinking to do differently; and we turn that into a vocation.  It is what travelers have done over the ages; it is what brought my family to this country; and it is the foundation of my business in spices!

Please join me at the Dream Factory Concord Breakfast on December 2, 8-10am to find out more.