Nectar In A Sieve: Industrialism Working the land with your bare hands is no easy task, yet some take extreme pride in working and living off the land. Nectar In A Sieve historically reveals the social strife, economic plunders, and cultural transformations experienced due to the birth of industrialism in early 20th century India through the recollection of an Indian woman's arduous life. Rukmani, the Indian woman, and her fellow villagers experience a plethora of hardships indirectly and directly caused by the slow but sure migration from working the land to working in the manufacturing industry. These hardships paired with a promise of employment and an escape from poverty woos the new generation of villagers to abandon cultural traditions …show more content…
Thumbi, Rukmani’s second son, attempts to explain his and Arjun’s decision to leave their family profession of tilling the land for industrialism prospects within the town. “If it were your land, or mine, I would work with you gladly. But what profit to labour for another and get so little in return? Far better to turn away for such injustice (Markandaya 50).” Nathan counters this statement later with, “What is it that calls you? Is it gold? Although we have none, remember that money is not everything (Markandaya 50).” This is one of the last attempts Nathan has to keep his son from leaving the land and his family. Later when Rukmani and Nathan find out Ira’s immoral way of earning money, prostitution, they try their best to prevent her from continuing but Ira does not obey. She declares that she will not let her siblings starve and soon bears a child from prostitution, “I held him, this child begotten in the street of an unknown man in a moment of easy desire, while the brightness of the future broke and fell about me like so many pieces of coloured glass (Markandaya 117).” As the novel progresses Rukmani recalls the painful scars the tannery had left her with, “Ira had ruined herself at the hands of the throngs that the tannery attracted... My sons had left because it frowned on them; one of them had been destroyed by its ruthlessness. And there were others its touch had scathed (Markandaya 23.57).” Through the eyes of Rukmani it is quite clear that the tannery has brought misery and cultural misfortune to the village. With the promise of financial stability and employment the tannery initially woos the new generation to abandon traditional customs and leave their families
Innocence ripped away and replaced by premature struggling through life is what outlines Sold by Patricia McCormick. This historical fiction novel follows the story of Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old girl living in Nepal. Desperately poor, Lakshmi can only enjoy simple pleasures, such as raising her speckled goat named Tali, and having her mother Ama brush and braid her hair. When the violent Himalayan rains tear away all that remains of their cucumber crops, Lakshmi’s maimed stepfather says she must take up a job, for he cannot get work. Lakshmi is introduced to the charming Bajai Sita who promises her a job as a maid in a wealthy area of India. Excited and full of hope to help her family, Lakshmi endures the long trek to India where her journey ends at the “Happiness House.” Soon she learns the frightening truth: she has been sold into prostitution. She is betrayed, broken, and yet still manages to come through her ordeal with her soul intact. Sold depicts a story meant to teach and inspire, making the novel a piece that is highly important for all to see and read.
Even when her son Raja is murdered at the tannery, her thoughts still don't come out in violence. She deals with her numbness and grief by thinking, "For this I have given you birth, my son, that you should lie at the end at my feet with ashes in your face and coldness in your limbs and yourself departed without a trace". After this is said, she prepares the body for the burial. Soon after, two officials come to the hut of Nathan and Rukmani to make sure she understands the tannery is not responsible for the death of her son. Rukmani is not moved to physical anger and, after much arguing, tells them what they want to hear.
There was a seemingly endless drought, the land was destroyed by poor farming techniques, and many left the broken tribe for opportunity in Johannesburg. The absence of rain left the people in despair. Without rain, the streams ran dry, they could not raise cows, and crops failed. No rain translated into no hope. When Kumalo returned to Ndotsheni following his journey to Johannesburg, he prayed for rain. He knew that rain would restore their land. After Kumalo learns that his son would not receive mercy and Jarvis put the sticks in the ground for the dam, the drought finally breaks when a storm passes over Ndotsheni. These two important events, along with the rain, bring about great change for both Kumalo and his village. On one hand, Absalom is going to die, but on the other hand, the village will come back to life. This juxtaposition reveals Kumalo’s conflicting feelings of grief and joy during his return to his people. Overall, the rain, paired with Jarvis’ help, breathes life into the people of Ndotsheni, giving them new hope for a prosperous
Symbolism is a poetic and literary element that interacts with readers and engages their feelings and emotions. In Sold, thirteen-year-old Nepali girl, Lakshmi, is forced to take a job to help support her family. Involuntarily, she ends up in prostitution via the Happiness House; this sex trafficking battle forces Lakshmi to envision her future and possibility of never returning home. The very first vignette of the novel speaks of a tin roof that her family desperately needs, especially for monsoon season. At the brothel, Lakshmi works to pay off her debt to the head mistress, Mumtaz, but cannot seem to get any sort of financial gain in her time there. Both the tin roof and the debt symbolize unforeseen and improbable ambitions, yet she finds the power within herself to believe. How does Lakshmi believe in herself despite her unfathomable living conditions and occupation?
In the age of industrialization when rural life gradually was destroyed, the author as a girl who spent most of her life in countryside could not help writing about it and what she focuses on in her story - femininity and masculinity, which themselves contain the symbolic meanings - come as no surprise.
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
Roy asserts that people’s fears of upsetting the power balance based in the caste system often leads to a blind acceptance of the status quo and a continuous sense of self-deprecation by individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy. When Velutha’s father fears that his son’s affair with a Touchable will have potentially disastrous consequences for him, he serves his own self-interest and is willing to endanger is son. He exposes the affair to the grandmother of the woman his son is having an affair with, revealing the extreme degree to which caste and conforming to societal norms drive the behaviors of individuals in Indian society; “So Vellya Paapen had come to tell Mamamachi himself. As a Paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it his duty…they had made the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible really happen…Offering to kill his son. To tear him limb from limb” (242). His fear of disrupting the status quo (i.e. the Indian social hierarchy) is so great that he is willing to sacrifice his own son’s life to protect his own. Rather than considering the genuine...
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
The centre of economy and the focus of many lives, the power of money is punctuated by the difference in wealth in Bhima and Sera’s lives in The Space Between Us. The importance of money is stressed in A Thousand Splendid Suns with the contrast between Mariam’s father’s prosperity and her mother’s poverty and the difference in Laila and Mariam’s lives before and after war. Centred on the newly abolished caste system, the distinction between Bhima and Sera’s financial situations underlines the difference money makes in their society. While Bhima is forced to live in a slum, Sera enjoys the luxury of her home and the employment of Bhima. Another luxury Bhima can’t afford is to welcome Maya’s baby. Instead she is forced to watch her granddaughter suffer from the emotional effects of an abortion. While Sera eagerly awaits the birth of her own grandchild she is the one who financially facilitates the abortion of Bhima’s great-grandchild. Furthermore, because of the pre-existing social constraints of the caste system, Bhima is not permitted to sit on the same furniture or use the same dishes as Sera. Similarly, Mariam’s life is also restricted by her mother’s pove...
In the novel, Nectar in a Sieve, the author, Kamala Markandaya creates various themes. One theme from the book is that tensions can be caused by modernization and industrial progress. This theme is highly prevalent throughout the story and broadens the reader’s outlook on modernization. Markandaya writes of a primitive village that is going through a severe change. Her ability to form a plethora of characters with different opinions, yet to share one main culture, helps highlight the tensions in the village.
Because the caste system is often thought of as an ancient fact of Hindu life, the poor people have become so acceptant of their caste that they are not motivated to become successful, even when an opportunity is handed to them. Balram explains this phenomenon using a rooster coop, which plays an important motive in the novel. He compares the poor people of India to the quality of life in a rooster coop, where large amounts of roosters are trapped tightly into a cage. Above the cage, a butcher slaughters other chickens. Even though the roosters know their fate, they do not try to escape. “The very same thing is being done with human beings in this
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and in all that time, people have faced immense obstacles. Yet, we are still here due to the resilience of the everyday person. This is a theme illustrated in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve, a story full of people who survive despite the world doing everything it could so that they couldn’t. Markandaya explores this power of the human spirit through the character of Nathan with his desire to live in the moment, his will to continue in the face of adversity, and his refusal to lose hope. Even when life gets him down, Nathan is a character who lives in the moment.
After moving to the city from the country, workers had to adjust to the new demanding pace of working. Factory owners required a more disciplined work space than the farm that the workers had been used to and they were no longer their own bosses. Factory owners would fine their workers if they left work early to return to the village for a festival or gathering, as it disrupted the flow of the other workers. Most workers worked six days a week, fourteen hours per day, and no paid holidays or vacations. Even on Sundays, child workers were expected to clean the machines and attend church services. Children were normally between th...
Nectar in a Sieve is a work of literature written in the mid 1900s. This work describes the effect that modernization and industrialization had on the farming families of India. During this time many traditional values had to be overturned by the people in order to keep up with the changing times. Many farmers lost their land and many people died of starvation due to bad harvests and inflating prices on goods. This novel specifically describes the life of a woman, Rukmani, and how her family was affected and the activities she and her family had to perform in order to survive. This work is very good in describing the life of a woman at this time and it will make you realize the hardships that these people had.
In this story, Rukumani, the protagonist faces a number of external conflicts; the conflict between her and her traditional Ceylonese Tamil family, the conflict between her and her mother, the conflict she has with her younger brother who messes up things for her, to name a few.