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Summary: Nectar in a Sieve
Review: Kamala Markandaya has done an impressive job in writing the novel "Nectar in a Sieve" for young readers. It's a story about a young girl named Rukmani who gets married at a young age to an elderly man. Its how this young girl grows up facing struggles and hardships. It shows the power of standing up in the difficult times. the author has done a marvelous job of incorparating history and culture of India. The feelings and emotions are explained clearly of the desire for a better place to live. It reflects upon the real lives of the people. Living in the rural area makes it challenging for the family to survive an dfinrd all the necessary resources, which is food. The starvation leads one of the infant chlidren to die while another child dies from an accident. Rukmani deals with the problems with courage and bravery even after her husband passes away. This novel demonstrates that there is always hope left in the time of darkness. An excellent novel that teaches the simplest lessons needed in life.
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Summary: Beautiful
Review: Nectar in a Sieve, though written almost 50 years ago, remains a classic. The writing is beautiful and lyrical, and the story of Rukmani's hardships is painful and moving. Many readers complained that this book was "too depressing" or "boring." Clearly, they missed out on the essence of the book. Yes, the book is not overburdened in plot, but it is the feelings of Indian life in a rural village, the feelings of a woman facing problems we can't even begin to concieve, the feelings of longing for a better world that make this book so touching. This book should give you an idea of India in the fifties, and the book's slow-moving style reflects that way of life. Don't be put off by others' reviews, my entire class loved this book when reading it for our history course. The book is in parts depressing, but life in India was very depressing, and Nectar doesn't wallow in the depression of the times like it could have, but has an undercurrent of hope for the future, picking up the pieces and moves on. Truly this book is amazing, and gives you the feel of India.
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Summary: Great backup information for British India
Review: I read this as a view as to what living in India was like under British rule and during their transitional period. It was great as an inside look to the average life of a peasent farmer.
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Summary: Beautifully Written Book! Will read AGAIN!!
Review: This book is the mark of the plight of women of earlier times- India's struggle with modernity and the unbelievable acts of woman for her family. The words were like liquid poetry, the words penetrated my conscience and my heart. I can no longer eat a full meal without thinking about Rukmani, the main character, and her struggles to survive over a few American dollars. It was sad and slapped me in the face that this book may explain the many starving lives in other countries. What touched me the most was the fact that this family DIDN'T DESERVE WHAT THEY GOT, yet they did not rebell nor did they stir. This novel also taught me many lessons about life- how it is so easy for us to survive in America and not see the conditions in other countries. I feel for this book and I love it. I don't understand why these other people gave this book such a low rating. They should give a reason instead saying that it was plain garbage. And I DO give a reason to my likings. Take my word for it...it is a wonderful book and every person, particularly mothers, should read it.
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Summary: Excellent
Review: I read this for an Intro in Indian Civilization class. It is a very good narrative, and I could not put it down. It describes bascially the life of an Indian woman from the time she gets married, and then it goes a full circle until the woman finds herself, essentially alone with no husband, at the same place she first lived after getting married.One of the themes of the book is modernity and its affects on an Indian village and Indian family. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Nectar in a Sieve
Review: Nectar in a Sieve is an emotional trip through the life of, Rukmani, an Indian woman. Begining in the present, she takes us through her life; sharing with her readers the hardships, sacrifices, the joys, and the family that we soon become a part of.
As Indian customs go, she is married off at the age of thirteen to a poor husband whom she grows to love. After trying for many years, thanks to the help of a white doctor, yet unknown to her husband, Rukmani is finaly able to have children. She watches the world change around her and her family into new modern business which she feels is distroying everything. Poverty and hunger stricken, she watches two of her sons die, one move far away and her daughter, unable to bear children, become a prostitue. This book pulls you so deep into the heart of Rukmani you can feel her tears when she is forced to move away from her homeland and go on a journey which eventulay takes the life of her beloved husband.
I really enjoyed this book and i reccomend it to anyone looking for a fast read of courage and never giving up.
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Summary: how i feel...
Review: Nectar in a Sieve. I believe there are two different interpretations in this ambiguous title, just like the words inflammable and flammable. Before I continue, let me inform you the definitions of nectar and sieve. Nectar is a sweet liquid secreted by flowers and are consumed by pollinators such as hummingbirds and insects. A sieve is a utensil for separating the finer and coarser parts of a pulverized substance. The first interpretation is that the main character in the story, Rukmani, used a sieve to try to capture all the sweetness out of her hard, miserable life and she somehow succeeded. The title shows how this brave Indian woman tries to get the best out of every challenge and never surrender to fate. The second interpretation, the one that I believe to be true, is that in Rukmani¡¦s depressing life she tried to capture the sweet nectar by using a sieve and the results were fruitless. All her hard work and her hope, represented by the nectar, slipped away bit by bit through the sieve. There are many evidences in the book that supports and chains my idea. Rukmani is the ¡§daughter of the village headman¡¨ but due to the reason of the dowries of her four previous sisters and the Collector in the village who seized control, Rukmani¡¦s family ¡§could not find her a rich husband, so they married her to a tenant farmer who was poor in everything.¡¨ Rukmani¡¦s social status drop suddenly from a daughter of a headman to a wife of a farmer and the marriage was considered as¡§ a poor match.¡¨ Later, to her disappointment, she gave birth to a girl named Irawaddy, ¡§after one of the great rivers of Asia, who would take with her a dowry and leave nothing but a memory behind.¡¨ Five years after the marriage of Irawaddy, she was returned to her parents for she is a ¡§barren women¡¨,¡§a failure." As the story moves on, more unexpected events came and shatter Rukmani¡¦s life. She gave birth to more children and ¡§the resources have to be shared out in smaller and smaller portions. Finally, ¡§they no longer had milk in the house and curds and butter were beyond their means except on rare occasions.¡¨ After their lives improve,¡§the rains failed¡¨ and ¡§the earth was parched to dust.¡¨Still,¡§day after day the pitiless sun blazed down, scorching whatever still struggled to grow and baking the earth hard until at last it split and great irregular fissures paged in the land.¡¨To Rukmani¡¦s surprise, her beloved daughter, Irawaddy, tried to help the family financially by becoming a prostitute. As a result, she gave birth to an albino child as ¡§fair as a blossom¡¨ and whose hair was the ¡§color of moonlight.¡¨ It was a great humiliation to the family and the source of gossip around the neighborhood. Due to the problem with the lack of rain, another merciless impact hit Rumani, her ¡§last child, conceived in happiness at a time when the river ran gently, had been taken¡¨ by death. These are just a few examples of obstacles such as poverty or disasters Rukmani encountered throughout her life. Many more heartrending events happened afterwards. To me, Rukmuni courageously used a sieve to try to capture the nectar, or precious objects in life but no matter how hard she tries, the sweetness seeps out and all that is left is bitterness and despair.
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Summary: Touching
Review: ¡¥Living in poverty does not mean one¡¦s life is miserable¡¦ is how I conclude the novel Nectar in a Sieve. Rukmani, an Indian woman, lives with her peasant husband Nathan in a simple village in India. Although India is a male dominant society, Nathan does not treat Rukmani in a cruel way, instead he loves her a lot, therefore, Rukmani¡¦s life is better than most of the women who are being abused by their male relatives. I can feel the respect that Nathan shows to Rukmani for her intelligence and knowledge. Throughout the novel, it is easy to see how Nathan shows his love and care to his family, especially to his wife. It is decent to see how the husband works together with his wife and family in a patriarchal society. Nathan¡¦s actions remind us that ¡¥absolute male power¡¦ can be dissolved if one is willing to do so. Nathan is living in India, it is natural for him to adopt the traditional ¡¥men rule¡¦ notion and apply to his family, but he never does that to his wife and family. This makes me think about how people make excuses and claims that it is hard to change the traditional rules in the patriarchy society. I think it partly depends on if one is willing to make change, or in fact taking advantages of the rules.
The loving couple has to deal with poverty as the rest of the villagers do. Due to the lack of money and food, one of their infant children dies from starvation. A son dies trying to get money for food, and eventually the couple has to accept the fact that their daughter becomes a prostitute to help the family survive. There are not so many choices left for Rukmani and Nathan, all they can do, they believe is to accept their fate. Those incidents reflect how insufficient the system and law in a country can be to protect its people, protecting anyone with wealth and power instead. Also, people from the city are protected by law whereas the villagers are deprived by the same law. We may pay our sympathy to the villagers, but look at our countries where the same thing happens too! We too take (or have to take) things as they are without questioning, like Rukmani and Nathan. The novel suggests that it is time for us to think again, find out the problems in the society and deal with them. Our actions will not only be beneficial to ourselves, but also to our next generations and thus, a lot of tragedies can be prevented. If the law was good enough to protect everyone, then Rukmani¡¦s daughter¡¦s life might be totally different and the story could be rewritten.
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Summary: heartbreaking!
Review: More Americans should be exposed to stories like this one, to get some sense of what LIFE means to the majority of people on earth. For me personally, it is very difficult to imagine having to struggle so intensely for a handful of rice to survive. That kind of existence does seem incredibly tragic and the book portrays it as such. What really flies high in this novel however is the ending. The power of love overwhelms everything. I still cry thinking about it! I'll never forget this book and I recommend it to all.
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Summary: Surviving gracefully - an uplifting story
Review: 'Nectar In A Sieve' joins the ranks of 'An Equal Music' and 'God of Small Things' as yet another treat by an Indian writer. For the beauty that it possesses, it is a remarkably simple narrative, tracing the life of an Indian woman Rukmani through changing times and fortunes. The novel beautifully portrays the life of people living by the land, of those whose fortunes are bound by it. This lot, unintelligent, earthbound and convention-ridden, living on the level of the basics, but even here, finding redemption, even here, despite resignation, suffering, death, loss, tragedy and disillusion, rejoicing in the compensations that land brings, living sometimes by them and sometimes for them. It follows the unsteady, unpredictable and uncontrollable rhythm of their lives. These people, with the land their only benefactor being lost to the wave of industrialization, live a life punctuated by poverty, illiteracy and stringent rituals and tempered only mildly by the blessings that the land ladles out from time to time. Their sorrows are great, their sufferings many , with little and rare joys between, but their hopes are high and their hearts large. Rukmani, like her lot, loses much to poverty but through the vicissitudes, stays positive and hopeful, never hardening to stoicism and never sinking into dull indifference. Generous in good times and foresighted and alert in leaner ones, she's modest in her rejoicings and uncomplaining in her suffering, bravely bracing tragedy and humbly welcoming joy, she acquires that peculiar Eastern grace that is compounded of resignation, composure and passivity. The woman's perspective becomes the narrative well as it required that extra degree of sensitivity and emotional intelligence that only a woman possesses. The story is told with beauty and restraint, narrated with as much fineness as the events unfold with crudeness. With a woman's sensitivity, she perceives the unseen and gleans the unsaid. Like a woman, with the fidelity that only an Eastern woman can know, she lives by the pledge of loyalty to her husband, home and family, always planning ahead, ensuring their comfort, sacrificing her joys for their needs. The books is a homage to her loyalty as it is a homage to a marriage that endures the worst, to the love that binds two hearts together. The narrative is sparse and pared, like the life of the people that it talks about. It's a monument to simplicity, with a distinct beauty that wrings poetry out of the prosaic and the sublime out of the mundane. Moving through joy and sorrow, bubbling over comedy and weeping over tragedy, it's a timeless tale of survival, hope and optimism. It has something of the quality of a fable, something of its timelessness; it's a story standing out of context, out of history and geography, a monument, an eternal reminder of a universal truth, of life __ ' an elemental book', of all that's quintessential and irreducible. In the final analysis, the novel is waif-like, like a poem said upon the breath, creating beauty, harmony, music and hope despite odds, finding it where none exists and always, hopeful and marching on.
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