“ Graphic picture of triumph and tragedy of rural India in kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a sieve”

The aim of this paper is to understand triumph and tragedy of rural life in an Indian contextthrough a close study of kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a sieve (1954).It is an effort to traceelements of triumph and tragedy in Indian English novel and at the same time the articleintends to explore how a particular Indian English novel portrays the graphic picture ofbeauty and ugliness of village life in India.Nectar in a sieve is Kamala Markandaya’s first published novel. It was published in 1954 andreceived high acclaim from the readers and the critics . It gives us an authentic description ofIndian rural population.Nectar in a sieve is a social novel . It is a document of the life ofpeople in rural India in all its aspects - economic , cultural , social and religious. The sceneof novel is laid in a village in South India. The novelist has purposely not given it’s name. Itis supposed to represent rural life , everywhere and anywhere in India - north, south ,east orwest. The subtitle is carefully chosen because even when main characters Rukmani andNathan go to a city , they live there as aliens and hate themselves for being there. Nathan diesin his desire to return to his village. Rukmani comes back to the village to spend theremaining years of her life in surrounding, which she loves. She brings with her an adoptedboy, Puli. He is city-born and bred, but he is taught to make village his home. The novelbegins in the village and ends in a village .It is rightly called ‘’the novel of rural India’’