The outcomes of such natural events are not just hard times – it’s starvation for a season. So long as you are vigilant and walk warily with thought and care, so long will it give you its aid but look away for an instant, be heedless or forgetful, and it has you by the throat.” “Nature is like a wild animal that you have trained to work for you. They are always at the mercy of nature: floods, droughts, insects, wind storms. But even one of those rooms is mainly used for storage of the rice and corn that they grow. There is no way out, so that means they are condemned to a life of poverty living in a two-room thatch and mud hut. But she does marry, not to a farmer who owns land, but to one who rents land. The main character is a woman who has the bad luck of being born a fourth daughter (so no dowry left) and she’s kind of plain looking, so she can’t hope for much in the way of a marriage partner. As I read it I wondered how much things have changed in those 65 years? And I suspect the answer may be “not much other than cell phones, and motor scooters instead of donkey carts.” Hopefully there are more social services and people don’t die as often from starvation. The hardship of life in rural India written in 1954.

This was followed by other fiction that dramatized the Quit India movement in 1942, the clash between East and West and the tragedy that resulted from it, or the problems facing ordinary middle-class Indians-making a living, finding inner peace, coping with modern technology and its effects on the poor. Nectar in a Sieve was her first published work, and its depiction of rural India and the suffering of farmers made it popular in the West. Kamala Markandaya belonged to that pioneering group of Indian women writers who made their mark not just through their subject matter, but also through their fluid, polished literary style.

Other novels include Some Inner Fury (1955), A Silence of Desire (1960), Possession (1963), A Handful of Rice (1966), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977), and Pleasure City (1982/1983). Known for writing about culture clash between Indian urban and rural societies, Markandaya's first published novel, Nectar in a Sieve, was a bestseller and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. After India declared its independence, Markandaya moved to Britain, though she still labeled herself an Indian expatriate long afterward. A native of Mysore, India, Markandaya was a graduate of Madras University, and afterward published several short stories in Indian newspapers. Pseudonym used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, an Indian novelist and journalist.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya