The Character Of Nectar In A Sieve By Kamala Markandaya

Kamala Markandaya was born in southern Indian city of Banglore in 1924.Although she was city born, she came to know the villages and rural areas, where the great majority of India’s people live. In 1948 at the age of twenty-four, she moved to England. Later she married an Englishman and settled there. Although Markandaya has lived in England her entire adult life, she has visited India frequently. There, she gathers background information and other material for her novel. Sometimes she has been criticized for losing her touch with her roots by country. Nevertheless, Markandaya disagrees. She claims that her long residence in England and self chosen as an outsider give her more objectivity and allow her to examine without prejudice the society, customs and characters of her native land.

Nectar in a

In her first novel Nectar in a Sieve, we get the glimpse of Indian culture in the very beginning when Rukmani the narrator of the novel describes about her poor match with her husband because of lack of dowry she says

“My three sisters were married long before I was Shanta first, a big wedding which lasted for many days, plenty of gifts and feasts, diamond earrings, a gold necklace, as befitted the daughter of the village headman, Padmani next, and she too made a good match and was married fittingly taking jewels and dowry with her; but when it came to Thangam, only relations from our own village came to the wedding and not from the surrounding districts as they had done before, and the only jewel she had was a diamond nose screw.”(P.2)

And when Rukmani came to womanhood her father becomes poor and he was no more village head man also. She