42 pages • 1 hour read
Kamala MarkandayaNectar in a Sieve
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary
A drought plagues India; no one can harvest enough crops to pay their dues. Sivaji, the landowner’s agent, comes to Nathan and Rukmani to ask for their rent. He agrees to give Nathan and Rukmani more time to gather half of what they owe. They sell clothes and kitchen supplies but still gather less than half of the money they need. Nathan wants to sell seeds, but Rukmani convinces him to wait until they have no choice. When Sivaji returns, he again agrees to buy them time, informing them he is not harsh by choice but rather by necessity. The rains finally come, but they come too late to save the existing crops.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
The land begins to recover. Nathan plants new crops while Rukmani portions her remaining rice stash for her family to eat for 24 more days. Kunthi visits and demands Rukmani give her a meal and rice to take home. When Rukmani says she cannot provide rice, Kunthi threatens to tell Nathan about Rukmani’s visits with Kenny and that she has been keeping secret from him.
Kunthi leaves with a week’s worth of rice. Rukmani then goes to her backyard stash and finds it nearly depleted. When she accuses her family of stealing from them, Nathan admits that he took from the rice store because Kunthi pressured him, too—he reveals that he is the father of Kunthi’s children. In return, Rukmani tells him about her nighttime visits with Kenny. With their secrets out in the open, they continue to do their best to survive the scarcity.
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
One morning, men bring Raja’s body to Rukmani and her family; guards killed him in the tannery yard. After they perform the burial rites and honor his life and death according to their customs, representatives from the tannery arrive to discuss liability. One man hides in the hut’s shadows, while the more intimidating man asserts that the tannery is not responsible for Raja’s death since the boy stole from them. Though Rukmani does not believe it, she agrees because she does not want to fight.
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary
The rice will be ready to harvest in three weeks, and Rukmani worries about how they will accomplish the task with their weakened bodies. Knowing their trials are ending, Nathan assures her that they can endure. Kuti’s illness worsens before it shifts and improves—Rukmani is unsure how, but she and Ira are grateful.
When everyone sleeps, Rukmani hears the quiet sound of feet; she believes Kunthi is robbing them again. She violently attacks the shadowed person and discovers it is Ira. She and Nathan clean Ira’s wounds and wash her sari, in which Rukmani finds a rupee. When Ira recovers, Nathan confronts her about where she goes at night. He draws out that she is engaging in sex work, and Rukmani realizes this is how Ira buys the supplies to improve Kuti’s health. Though they disapprove, they do not stop her. Nathan refuses to eat anything Ira’s cash buys.
Kuti’s health shifts again, this time for the worse. He passes quietly, and his parents mourn the death of their last child born in times of plenty and peace.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary
The harvest after Kuti’s death is bountiful. Despite their sorrow, the family cannot help but celebrate the overabundance of rice they harvested; they laugh and portion out the rice for selling and keeping.
Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary
Rukmani takes her vegetables to the market and receives a reasonable price from various vendors. As she passes Biswas’s shop, he informs her that Kenny has returned to town. She debates whether to see him immediately and chooses to do so. She updates him about the deaths of her two sons and Ira, who is pregnant by one of the men who have paid for her services. Rukmani believes the pregnancy is shameful, but Kenny asserts that everyone has opinions, and the child will not be worse off because of how people think about it. This aligns with Nathan’s opinion on the baby. When she leaves, Rukmani takes comfort in the fact that Kenny and Nathan agree despite having different perspectives.
Part 1, Chapters 13-18 Analysis
The novel’s middle chapters focus on the impacts of Poverty and Survival in a Changing World. Natural disasters are unpredictable, and from the beginning, Rukmani’s family must ration and save whatever they can; they know precisely how long they can make food last and plan accordingly. Rukmani accepts that she has done all she can to provide for her family in their time of need until the next harvest, and she assures herself that “for at least twenty-four days we shall eat [...] At the end of that time—well, we are in God’s hands. He will not fail us” (79). She does not lose hope. However, it is not only nature that causes their struggles. Markandaya also focuses on how man-made hardships affect rural life, continuing to portray the negative impact of modernization. The supposed positive progress of the tannery does not benefit the village during this communal adversity. Rukmani never discusses how the tannery changes, nor does she comment on the quality of life for the tannery workers; her sons no longer work there, so they cannot rely on commercial progress to survive. This lens focuses on the impacts of poverty on her family and the feelings it creates: desperation, hope, fear, and despair. Markandaya chose this focus intentionally to illuminate the visible and invisible costs that people of lower socioeconomic status must pay for progress to thrive.
Poverty compounds the impact of the tannery on Rukmani’s family when the guards kill her son, Raja. Rather than approaching her family with empathy, the primary representative is cold and unfeeling: “The point is [...] that no fault attaches to us. Absolutely none. Of course, as my friend said, it is your loss. But not, remember, our responsibility” (90-91). Markandaya crafts an inhuman image of progress and modernization through this representative; it does not care who cannot keep up, and it does not take responsibility for its actions or impacts. Instead, responsibility shifts to those who do not have the power to fight back. Rukmani and her family cannot go against the tannery when they do not have enough food or money to get by. Rukmani only accepts that the tannery holds no responsibility for Raja’s death because she cannot fathom taking them on amid their existing power dynamic.
Finally, Rukmani’s youngest child, Kuti, dies, and they harvest a bountiful rice crop. The contrasting images of life and death strengthen when placed next to each other. Kuti’s death becomes overshadowed by the promise of life. While the family mourns, they find hope that life will continue as they plan for the future based on their current rice crop. However, Kuti’s death serves a significant narrative function in these chapters. Rukmani notes that “[our] last child, conceived in happiness at a time when the river of our lives ran gently, had been taken from us” (100). The time when Rukmani’s family was happy and their rural life was plentiful was before the tannery took hold, and in its wake, they will not experience this abundance again. With Kuti’s death, Markandaya foreshadows the death of the traditional lives that Nathan and Rukmani have known thus far. Soon, the new socioeconomic landscape of the town will force them to adapt or leave.
