Sufferings and Starvation in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve

Kamala Markandaya is one of the best known contemporary Indian novelists. Her novels are remarkable for their range of experience. Her first novel Nectar in a Sieve is set in a village and it examines the hard agricultural life of the south Indian village where industry and modern technology played havoc. Kamala Markandaya occupies a very important position among the women novelist who have made substantial contribution to Indian fiction after the Second World War. Markandaya had not always lived abroad. She was born as Kamala Purnaiya in 1924 in Mysore and she was also a journalist. At some point, she decided to spend 18 months in a village “out of curiosity”. This inspired the setting of her first novel, centred on Rukmani and her husband Nathan. Nectar in a Sieve is remarkable for its portrayal of rustics who live in fear, hunger and despair. It is of the dark future; fear of the sharpness of hunger; fear of blackness of death. Almost all the characters in this novel lead miserable life and most of them fail to survive. There are at least a couple of them who were not successfully struggle and have the concept of survival. This novel tells the story of landless peasants of India who face starvation, oppression, breakup of family, home and death. Yet they retain their compassion, love, the strength to face their life and take delight in the little pleasures of the daily existence.

‘Unsettled and Unsettling’ Women Migrant Voices After the War

Mary Joannou examines the place of London as a haven for English-speaking exiles and émigrés and questions the extent to which it is possible to separate English literature from the literature of the rest of the world as post-war globalization destabilized, de-territorialized and de-colonized Englishness. For the five migrant women writers addressed here - Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, and Kamala Markandaya – the attractions of migration to London, albeit bomb-damaged and shortage riven after the war, far outweighed the drabness of the environment of the metropolis. The new migrants, all politically on the left and strong upholders of freedom of speech and universal human rights, made a significant contribution to the enrichment and expansion of Britain’s literary culture in the 1940s and 1950s which was well-served by thriving post-war publishing and media industries.

British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960

British Women Writers 1930 – 1960: Between the Waves contributes to the vital recuperative work on mid-twentieth century writing by and for women. Fourteen original essays from leading academics and emerging critical voices shed new light on writers commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of the fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism of a selection authors including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. The neologism ‘interfeminism’, coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’, locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths which have traditionally overshadowed its members. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing, the volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the inter- and post- bellum anticipate the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterize second and third wave feminism. Exploration of popular women’s magazines of the period, and new archival material, add an innovative dimension to this study of the literature of a volatile and transformative period of British social and cultural history.

Kamala Markandaya’s Bombay Tiger: The Representation of Socio-Cultural Life

This paper is an attempt to study the representation of socio-cultural life in Kamala Markandaya’s Bombay Tiger. Being a leading post-independent Indian novelist, Kamala Markandaya has candidly portrayed Indian social, cultural and political life through her novels. She has rightly reflected these aspects in the work Bombay Tiger. Her description of various aspects and dimensions of cultural life is not imaginary and based on some literature, but it is based on carefully observed traditions and depicted cultural values and ideas. Soon after the death of Kamala Markandaya her daughter Kim Oliver found a typewritten copy of her novel and it was published posthumously with the title ‘Bombay Tiger’ in 2008. Charles R. Larson, one of the close friends of Markandaya and Professor of Literature, American University, Washington, DC has written an introduction to novel Bombay Tiger (2008) where he writes: Reading Bombay Tiger twenty years after Kamala Markandaya began writing the novel is a kind of revelation – especially for what it says about contemporary India” (Larson xii). Although Markandaya lived in abroad she kept in touch with the India. She actively read English newspapers which provided excellent coverage of occurrences in the commonwealth in general and India in particular. It has been rightly said that Kamala Markandaya’s “Sense of India was always extraordinarily vivid, filled with rich vitality, and imaginative in the way of all great writers (and especially novelists) who have been connected to place (Larson xii).

INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF WOMAN AND NATURE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO WOMAN CHARACTER NANDA KAUL IN ANITA DESAI’S FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

The paper focuses on the changing trends in Indian writing in English with special reference to Anita Desai. During the seventy years of its effective history Indian writing in English crossed many milestones and has come to be finally accepted as a major literature of the world. A new group of writers have arrived on the Indian scenario, for example - Anita Desai, Chaman Nahal, Kamala Markandaya, Arun Joshi,Dina Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Shobha De, Vandana Shiva, and the Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and many more in list. Here I would like to focus on the new trend in Indian literature and that is ecofeminism as well as her portyal of woman characters in that context. A close reading of Anita Desai and her novels makes us aware of her novel is related to her own experiences and the reality. Attention on this work is focused on the life of Anita Desai, her interest in ecofeminism and how she is influenced by social, economic, political and cultural problems of her age.

Violated Virginity of Nature and Humans : An Ecocritical Study of Kamala Markandaya’s Novels The Coffer Dams and Two Virgins

The Indian novelist and journalist Kamala Purnaiya Taylor, (pseudonym : Kamala Markandaya (1924 – 16 May 2004) expresses her worries about nature and human’s virginity in the sense that both are to harmonize with each other and live in peace ,so that none of them attacks the virginity of the other. Once humans or nature lose it, they become a different element that is entirely different from the one it used to be before the attack takes place. Moreover, each one of them may react violently to the cause or doer, vengeance or passivism may be among the results of that cause or action of the doer. It may get out of control and the destruction caused may not be healed easily, and sometime it may not get healed at all. Ecocrtically, Markandaya studies the human psychology before and that attack happens. She also assesse the reaction of nature to any harm it may undergo.

Unshackling the tribal women in Indian English Literature: dreams and visions

The marginalised tribal women comprise the weakest section of the Indian society. It is a sad reality that their identity remains weak, unvoiced and largely unexplored. Invigorating them would enhance the collective national capability as it will carry justice, equity and development to the most vulnerable segment of the nation, thereby reinforcing and the frailest of its stalk. The portrayal of tribal women in literature can go a long way in spreading awareness about the cause, not only on the national, but also on an international scale. Writing on these marginalised, poor, and socially excluded women can in the long run, change the perception of the society and bring to attention the neglected lot, integrating them rightfully with society. Prominent writers including Mahasweta Devi, Kamala Markandaya and Gita Mehta among others have made important contributions in this area. While the tribal narratives voice the concerns of the tribals, there still remains lot of room for exploring and expressing the concerns of these women for a feminist rendition . This paper examines the potential of writings on the female tribal protagonist.

The portrayal of Social Evils in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice

Life is very precious for everyone. Life needs proper care and nurture. Human life depends on society. Only in a good society we can find a good life. Life is simple, very little is needed to make it happy. But social evils insist on making it complicated. Social evils in society have become a serious concern in the present day world. It is gradually affecting roots of our culture and its blocking its rapid growth on the global chart. The aim of writing this research paper is to highlight Social Evils in rural and urban societies. This research paper will explore the meaning, reason, effect of social evils in the light of the analysis of two novels of Kamala Markandaya, an Indian English writer. The research paper entitled ‘The portrayal of Social Evils in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice.’ In this paper, the effort is made to study Kamala Markandaya’s Social Evils in Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice. We will find poverty, hunger, starvation, beggary, prostitution, crime, unemployment and many more social evils in both novels. Kamala Markandaya’s A Handful of Rice and Nectar in a Sieve nothing but an account of the suffering of the rural and urban people, and how the cruelty of social evil resulting in suffering, death and misfortune is more explicit in both novels. Poverty is the everyday reality of the characters in the both novels. Poverty is not an abstract concept that one can really think about, it’s like wolf at the door that must constantly be staved off. Both novels are a jolt to awaken the society against social evils.