ant farmers like Nathan particularly vulnerable. Disaster
upon disaster strikes the family, including a situation
where Ruku’s daughter Ira is rejected by her husband for
being unable to bear a child. Two of Ruku’s sons end up
migrating to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to find work; a third is
killed by tannery officials when he attempts to find food
for his family; a fourth moves to the city to find work; a
fifth is apprenticed to the white doctor, Kenny; and the
sixth dies as an infant due to starvation. Eventually, the
family is so destitute that even Ira’s prostitution cannot
keep the family from starvation. Ruku and Nathan leave
their village to seek their fourth son in the city, but more
tragedy and hunger await them there. Finally, Ruku and
Nathan plan a return back to their village; though Nathan dies while still in the city, Ruku, along with an adopted son, Puli, returns home, and the novel concludes
with this homecoming.
Setting
Because the novel provides so many realistic details
about daily village life and rice farming, it may take
some time for the reader to realize that Markandaya
never provides a specific location for the rural village in
Part One or for the city in Part Two. This was a strategic
decision on Markandaya’s part. While cultural customs
serve as clues to the southern and Tamil-speaking setting of the novel, the village is meant to be universal in
its representation of rural Indian life and the historical
Cultural customs depicted in Nectar in a Sieve
serve as clues to the southern and Tamil-speaking
setting of the novel, though the village is
meant to be universal in its
representation of rural Indian life.
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transformations that affected the Indian peasant.
Although Markandaya does not explicitly tell the
reader exactly when the novel’s events take place, the
novel does give us clues that directly point to the fact that
it might be set during the colonial period: the mention of
white people as distinctly powerful, white capitalists (the
investors in the Tannery), the presences of zamindars
who were abolished with the creation of an independent
India and Pakistan as two separate nation states, and
indentured labor in the form of Tamil migration to tea
plantations in Ceylon. This changes our interpretation of
the novel and the historical messages it relays.
Plot Summary
Part One – Chapters 1–5
The novel begins with Ruku’s first-person narration,
as she tells the reader that sometimes she thinks that her
husband is with her again. From these first sentences,
we understand that her husband is deceased. In the next
paragraph, Ruku watches her son, daughter, and Puli,
the child she “clung to” who was not hers, step into the
yard. Then, Ruku shifts her gaze to the building where
her son and Kenny work. At this point, Ruku’s thoughts
move far away into her own past, and she recalls her own
childhood with her three sisters. The reader is left with
a bit of uncertainty—we do not know who Kenny is, nor
do we know if Ruku has only had two children.
Ruku’s family was only able to find a poor tenant
farmer, Nathan, for her to marry due to the lack of a
dowry. At twelve, Ruku married Nathan, and narrator Ruku remembers that many people called it “a poor
match.” However, narrator Ruku remarks on “how little
they knew, any of them,” which implies that her marriage defied these expectations and instead was a wonderful match. Ruku describes the early days of her marriage and her own fear and hesitancy, and Nathan’s calm
patience and understanding.
Ruku makes friends with three village women—
Janaki, Kali, and Kunthi. Soon, Ruku becomes pregnant
and while she is resting, she begins to take up writing
again. It is clear that her literacy is very uncommon for
her social standing and gender, but Ruku draws comfort
and hope from her writing. When Ruku gives birth to
her daughter, Irawaddy (also called Ira), she first feels
disappointment because her firstborn is not a boy. But
soon she bonds to her daughter, who turns out to be an
extraordinarily lovely child. Six years after Ira is born,
Ruku still has not conceived another child. She meets
the white doctor, Kennington, when her mother is ill,
and he perceives that Ruku is upset over her infertility.
Kenny treats Ruku, and she quickly conceives and give
birth to five sons in succession. Years later, Kenny visits
Ruku and becomes acquainted with her entire family,
helping them out when he can.
Change comes to the village in the form of a new tannery and an influx of new workers. The villagers have
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Photograph from the time of the British Raj.
Nectar in a Sieve widely critiques the legal,
economic, and caste structures
of colonial India.
ther is the head of the village, and Ruku grows up believing that her father is the leader of the community and
holds a great deal of power. When she tells her brother
about her wedding dreams, he scolds her for “speak[ing]
like a fool, the headman is no longer of consequence.
There is the Collector, who comes to these villages once
a year, and to him is the power, and to those he appoints;
not to the headman.” Unbeknownst to Ruku, her father’s
power has been usurped by the system of colonial administration. While he retains the title of headman, he
is a figurehead only—his title does not translate into real
economic or social power.
Ruku begins Chapter 4 by reflecting on the type of
changes she had known in her life. She notes that she
had watched her father’s power diminish, “but the alteration was so slow that we hardly knew when it came.”
She had also watched her parents age and die, but while
this change was painful, it too was gradual and nonviolent. However, in a moment of foreshadowing, she tells
the reader that “the change that now came into my life,
into all our lives, blasting its way into our village, seemed
wrought in the twinkling of an eye.” These devastating,
wrenching, violent changes are brought to the village by
the construction of the tannery, and this insight comes
from an older Ruku, one who is able to see the full course
of destruction.
While many readers will interpret the tannery as a
general symbol of modernity—and indeed it is—it is
important to recognize that modernity and colonialism
cannot be separated in this novel. The tannery transforms the village economically, environmentally, and
socially. It devastates the local subsistence economy, it
pollutes the water and land, and it alters the family and
kinship structures. These are outcomes of modernity, but
they are also outcomes of colonialism. As Ruku observes
a few chapters later, the tannery’s growth swallows everything in its path:
A photograph of rural India from colonial times. In
Nectar in a Sieve, Ruku witnesses the devastating
changes brought by modernity and industrialization in the form of the tannery, which
wholly transforms
her village and its way of life.
It was a great sprawling growth, this tannery.
It grew and flourished and spread. Not a month
went by but somebody’s land was swallowed up,
another building appeared. Night and day the
tanning went on.
At the height of the British Empire, the British controlled about one-quarter of the globe; on a smaller scale,
the tannery has taken on a life of its own and now controls almost the entire village.
There are several moments of foresight or foreshadowing in Chapter 4. During the construction of the tannery,
the villagers gather around to watch and seem to be disrupting the progress. A white man enters into the crowd,
speaks with the overseer, and afterward, the overseer
tries to disperse the crowd. The white man is the owner
of the tannery, and the overseer, who a moment ago was
in control of the workers, suddenly begins to “bow and
scrape” in front of the owner. As the villagers reluctantly
leave, Kannan, the owner of the village’s current tanning business, remarks that the white man and overseer
are telling them what to do “as if he owned us.” Kannan
stands his ground because he “resent[s] the haughty orders,” but most of the villagers, including Ruku, obey the
command. However, Ruku thinks: “already he foresaw
his livelihood being wrested from him.” While Kannan
is speaking figuratively—the white man and the overseer do not actually own the villagers as slaves—it does
ring true. In colonialism, the people who own the means
of production (the factories, the land) are the ones who
control the capital and goods that are produced. The tannery represents a shift in the extractive nature of British
colonialism
The young Ruku has a difficult conversation with her
husband after the tannery is built, and there is a lull in
the work. When Nathan tells her that he is sure the
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