27-12-2012, 11:45 AM
REALISM IN THE NOVELS OF KAMALA MARKANDAYA
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I
After going through the novels of Kamla Markandaya , from Nectar in a Sieve to Pleasure City , we get an impression that here is a novelist who is quite familiar with each and every aspect of Indian life, belonging both to the rural and the urban state of Indian milieu . The picture of human nature , its setting and problems , its struggle and survival , its success and failure which she depicts through her writings is not idyllic a poetic , but is characterised by a stern , diwn – to – earth realism. The realistic approach to life is the hallmark of her fiction, and in this respect , she can be grouped, once again , with such great humanists like Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattacharya . As Kai Nichoson says :
‘ With her impeccable representational realism and innovative description
Of the Indian arcadia , Markandaya achieves a perfect poise between
The rural reality and the discipline urbanity of art.’1
Realism is the basic creed of her fictional writings and she believes avdently in the dictum of art for life’s sake. Like Anand and Bhattacharya , she wants to expose human follies and hypocrisies of Indian society because she began her career as a novelist at a time when India was facing a number of broblems like racial differences and disharmony, starvation and poverty from natural calamities like famine and draught. At the same time , she has depicted in her novels the racial conflicts , cultural differences, temperamental disparities and sexual perversion , and naturally she has drawn a realistic picture of rural India contrasted with the glamorous westernized world of England . Her stay in South Indian villagesbefore marriage and her settlement in England after marriage enabled her to draw a realistic picture of East and West .
The primary factor that contributes to realism in Markandaya’s novels is the fact that the experience portrayed by the author is peculiar to India alone ; that it is a product of the specific geographical region or location in which the novel is set. This experience would be inherently different somewhere else than in the specific setting of the novel of this genre . A second criterion for Indianness or realism in theme relates to the experience described.A typical realistic theme is one with which a majority of Indians would or could empathize and identify with – being commonplace within the Indian context. M. E . Derrett’s attempts in The Modern Indian Novel in English : A Comparative Approach to pinpoint the peculiarity of Indo – English themes, comments on the ‘extraordinarily rapid social and economic changes’3 that took place in the country at the time. He concludes that ‘the most popular themes are concerned with social progress in India , the impact on her of the West , of Western – returned students or of Western influence inside India as it effects the already wide gulf between life in the towns and village life’.4 Madhusudan Prasd provides a much more concise categorization restricting his critical sweep to the novels of Kamla Markandaya specifically and concludes that she ‘has in the main treated four themes – the theme of poverty and hunger , the theme of struggle for Independence , the theme of conflict between traditionalism and modernism and the themes of East – West dichotomy.’5 Prasad desdibes the bulk of her novels with these realistic Indian themes as ‘the literature of concern’.6 The third important factor , responsible for the realism in Markandaya’s novels , lies in character – creation and portrayal. It becomes evident that , by and large , characters in Indo – English fiction are true to life. One sees , then , that Kamla Markandaya’s novels contain every stereotypical character that has existed since Indian writing in English first came into being.
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Kamla Markandaya’s first novel Nectar in a Sieve which is often appreciated as her masterpiece deals with theme of hunger , poverty and degradation of mankind , especially in rural India . These aspects of rural India society have also been depicted by other Prominent Indo – English writers like Anand , Bhattacharya and Narayan. C. Paul. Verghese rightly observes: ‘Food is a primary requisite of human dignity: hunger debases and dehumanises the man. That is why, hunger is the theme of a large number of Indo – Anglian novels.’7Though Nectar in a Sieve has been compared with Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth , yet ‘its nearer and opted analogy would be K. S. Venkatramani’s Murugan , the Tiller.’8 Nectar in a Sieve unfolds the story of a peasant couple , Rukmani and Nathan , riddles with economic factors, social evils and natural calamities . This novel exposes the cruel lot of the typical Indian peasant who suffers silently – a victim of the vagaries of nature , of the feudal system of zamindars , of the forces of technological progress which dislodge him from his native soil and force him to relocate to an alien environment . This results in a faceless existence of struggle and dignity as an immigrant on the city – streets