Nectar in a Sieve

In Rukmani's quest for dignity, hunger is a potent enemy. Fear of hunger, she says, torments the peace of every peasant who lives by the vagaries of the wind and rain. Tired of constant hunger, her elder sons break up the family to seek new lives in a new land. Another son resorts to theft and is killed for it, leaving Rukmani to grieve for his meaningless life. Her daughter chooses the degradation of prostitution over the degradation of starvation. Rukmani nearly becomes a murderer, thinking Kunthi has come to steal the last of their rice. In the city, Rukmani observes the supplicants at the temple pushing and shoving like animals to secure a share of food. Similarly, beggar children snarl and fight like beasts over a scrap dropped in the street. Rukmani indicts both the industrialization of the villages, represented by the tannery, and the laws of land ownership that impoverish and displace peasants like her and Nathan. In Nectar in a Sieve, hunger breeds thieves, prostitutes, murderers, and subhuman beasts. Not only nature's whims but also the choices of an unjust society produce the shameful misery of starvation.

The poor in Markandaya's novel often suffer at the hands of the strong, but some of them understand that knowledge is a powerful weapon for change. Rukmani insists on teaching all of her children to read and write, even though many in the village believe such knowledge leads to trouble. Her eldest sons are branded troublemakers because they dare to band the workers together in a strike for better wages. The tannery wins because the workers' coalition fails to hold. Arjun complains that the people will never learn, echoing Kenny's sentiments as an educated outsider. Rukmani turns to Kenny because, she says, white men have power. Kenny uses his power for good, treating the poor and raising funds to build a hospital. Kunthi uses her knowledge to exercise an evil power, but once Nathan and Rukmani share the truth with each other, Kunthi's power over them is broken. Puli shares his knowledge of the city to help Nathan and Rukmani save money for their fare home. Throughout the novel, the admirable characters are those who apply their knowledge to help people stand together in a display of moral power.

Rukmani is a strong voice for the world's poor because she speaks with clarity and truth. She reveals a world the literate are seldom forced to examine, and her descriptions of the physical ravages of starvation are simple, powerful, and timeless. One of Rukmani's particular strengths lies in confronting her own misconceptions, as people and events often challenge her traditional views. Her sons repudiate their caste, her daughter redefines dishonor, and her grandson crosses the barrier of skin color. Kenny demands that she rethink her preconceptions about distrusting strangers, suffering passively, and taking action against injustice. In each case, Rukmani gets stronger because of her devotion to truth, and at the same time she exhibits the Hindu belief that truth transcends all other moral values.

Fertility is so precious to Rukmani that she takes risks to pursue it. When she is pregnant with Ira, she encounters a cobra in her pumpkin vine, and though it might have killed her and does induce early labor, she does not stop raising vegetables for fear of snakes. Her vegetables are a source of both food and beauty to Rukmani, and she compares their rounded shapes to fertile young women. She conquers her fear of a foreign doctor to seek treatment for barrenness, risking Nathan's disapproval. Because of Kunthi's blackmail, the risk extends to losing Nathan's love and support, without which she feels she cannot live. Ira's miseries also stem from infertility, and she loses her husband to another woman because she cannot give him sons. The fertility of the land is paramount, for when the land does not produce, the family starves. Images of grains of rice, sprouting paddy, and the harvest represent life itself.

Great change is accompanied by drumbeats in Rukmani's life. Drummers first appear to call laborers into the village, and Rukmani loses her first two sons to Ceylon. Ira has a drummer and a fiddler for her wedding before she leaves her mother's home. Drumbeats announce the widespread devastation of the flood that destroys their crops. Drummers emphasize the passion and joy of Deepavali, the Festival of Lights, which marks a highlight for Rukmani as well as the conception of her last child. When Raja is killed by the tannery guards, Rukmani listens to the drumbeats at his funeral pyre until they die away. Just before Nathan dies, Rukmani buys Puli a dum-dum cart that plays a drum as it is pulled along. With their insistent rhythm, drumbeats announce and predict each change of circumstance.

Again and again, Rukmani confronts those who are different and learns from her encounters. From the Muslim wife of a tannery official she learns that possessions are less important than freedom. From the tannery official who visits after Raja's death, she learns that a cold and mercenary heart creates a chasm between people that cannot be crossed. From Kenny she learns that some strangers care enough about the suffering of others to contribute funds for a hospital. From Das, the servant in the city, she learns the value of kindness to the destitute. From a helpful stranger, she learns there is food for the poor at the temple. From Puli she learns that family can be created through generosity. Rukmani's life is enriched by the strangers who enter it.

Rice is the overriding symbol for life itself in Nectar in a Sieve. Nathan presses grains from his harvest into Rukmani's hands to impress his bride with their prospects for prosperity. As Rukmani learns to plant, she is struck by the wonder of seeds that contain, for her, life itself. Mounds of rice tinted with saffron and fried in butter mark the birth feast for Rukmani's first son. The monsoon floods destroy the paddy and, with it, the family's chance to eat that season. They use their precious savings to buy rice at exorbitant prices, for without it they will not live. When the drought takes their harvest, Rukmani runs her fingers obsessively through the last of her hoarded rice. She loves the feeling of the rice because she loves life so fiercely.

By their strong and patient work, bullocks are closely allied with the hardworking peasants who live on the land. The bullocks who carry Rukmani as a bride to her new home wear bells on their horns to tinkle a happy accompaniment to the song of birds and sweet smells of the land. Like Nathan and Rukmani, the bullocks underscore the harmony of nature. They provide the dung Rukmani uses to burn for fuel and waterproof her hut. But like the peasants, the bullocks suffer from the injustice of overwork. One of the bullocks pulling them to the city develops a festering sore. The carter explains that he has to continue to work the animal in order to make his living, just as Nathan and Rukmani must work to gather in their harvest even while they are starving to death. The bullock flinches when the yoke is put upon his raw neck, but he patiently accepts his fate. Rukmani's sympathy for the injured beast is indicative of her stand against the injustice of the peasant's lot.

Rukmani's wedding sari is the material possession she most prizes, and she holds fast to it as a source of prestige, dignity, and pride. Made of rich cloth with wide borders in silver thread, it communicates that her father was a headman and that she comes from important people. For Ira's wedding, Rukmani brings forth hoarded stores of food and delicacies to make a fine showing for the feast, but, more important, she provides the wedding sari for Ira to wear. During their hard and hungry times, Rukmani holds on to the wedding sari to wear at her sons' future weddings so she will not shame them. When faced with destitution, Rukmani must choose between the sari and the land. She offers the sari for sale along with their bullocks and household possessions in order to hold on to the land they need to live. By relinquishing her most prized possession, Rukmani reduces her attachment to worldly goods as an important step toward achieving the Hindu virtue of dharma.