Nectar In A Seive

Nectar in a Sieve.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya is a realistic fiction about a woman named Rukmani looking back at her life. Overall, I think this book was extremely depressing. Throughout the whole book Rukmani's situation gets worse and worse, yet she still hopes for it to improve. It was very upsetting that there was so much poverty in the town, and nothing was really being done to fix it. Kenny tried to help as much as he could, but reading about that much poverty is extremely disheartening. Living in America, not many people are exposed to things like that very often, so reading this book was a shock, even though things like that go on every day in other countries.

I found it very interesting that Irawaddy's husband would return her to her family simply because she did not have his child. It was also odd that he could just RETURN her, like she was just an item bought in a store. Since I am used to seeing people get married because they love each other, it was very strange that a husband would ever give his wife back to their family just because she could not have a baby. The reason in the story that he returned her is because in that culture, if you do not have children, there is no one to take care of you and help you out when you get older, so it is imperative to have children.

Kunthi was by far the most frustrating character. From the beginning of the story, she is not kind to Rukmani. She was excited that the tannery was built simply because life would be more exciting. It was the worst when she blackmailed Rukmani and Nathan to try to get food. She knew about Rukmani's visits with Nathan, and assumed that they must have been having an affair, since that was something that she would have done. She would have had no problem ruining Ruki and Nathan's relationship to help herself out, which is extremely selfish. She may have just been doing those things to keep herself alive, but I truthfully think that she could have survived without doing those things to Ruki and her family.

My favorite character was Irawaddy because she was always kind and would do whatever she could to help her family. Also, I feel sympathy for her because she had such a difficult life. When she was not able to conceive a child with her husband, she was returned home which was very depressing for her. When her little brother Kuti was born, she took him in as her own son. To me, it seemed like since she was not able to have her own child, she wanted to raise him as her own. I thought that was a very respectable thing to do.