Elements In Markandaya's Nectar In A Sieve

Elements in "Nectar in a Sieve":-

Place:- Rural India, a city in India

Part One of the novel takes place in an unnamed village in rural India, while Part Two takes place in an unnamed major city in urban India. Markandaya’s decision to avoid specifics is deliberate: the fact is that the first part of the story could take place in any part of any agricultural nation, and the second part in among any sector of the urban poor. This lack of specificity opens the scope of Nectar in a Sieve: this story could apply to families other than Rukmani’s. The important thing is that our characters go from subsistence living in a largely agricultural economy, to barely making a living in a city economy.

Times are changing, and industrialization is encroaching on the rural areas, so the agriculture and working classes are forced to move into similar situations of poverty in urban landscapes. This could be just as

In this novel, the beauty of the landscape is almost a reflection of the goodness of the people on the land. Though bad things do happen in Ruku’s village, people in the city seem infinitely worse-off. Only in the city does Ruku see people push the crippled and scrounge for food like animals. The implication is that people are most natural in rural surroundings. When they are taken out of these surroundings and thrust into the dirty artificiality of the city, they lose a bit of theirs.

It’s notable that the novel’s most evil character, Kunthi, proudly argues that she’s not tied to the earth, whereas morally upstanding Ruku celebrates and reveres the earth. In this pastoral reading, the goodness of the earth is a moral reflection of the goodness of people, and a polluted earth (i.e. the city) is a stronghold for the morally weak, thieves, crooks, and generally antagonistic people.