Summary
The next year there is no rain. Nathan and Rukmani pray to the statue of a goddess, but watch their shoots wither and die. Sivaji comes to collect for the owner of the land. Nathan points out that they have harvested nothing without rain and with a dry river. Sivaji insists he must collect the rent, threatening that the land will be given to someone else if they cannot pay at least half now. Rather than give up the land, the couple gathers objects, clothes, their cattle, and reserved food to sell. Biswas gives 75 rupees for saris Rukmani brings him, but only after making her feel ashamed and desperate.
Together with the other items sold, the couple raises 125 rupees. Rukmani refuses to let Nathan sell their seed, which they’ll need for the next crop. Sivaji reluctantly takes the money, which doesn’t amount to half of what they owe, on the promise that they’ll make it up the next harvest. The drought continues for many days. Rukmani and other villagers collect meager amounts of water from the reservoir that was built for the tannery workers and their families. When the rain finally comes, Rukmani and her family are so defeated that there is no joy left in them.
Once rain has replenished the dry soil, Rukmani and Nathan sow their seeds and plant their seedlings. They put all their hope into the plants growing well. Rukmani divides her last untouched reserves of rice and divides it into portions that will last the family 24 days; after that, she doesn’t know what they’ll do. One evening Kunthi arrives when Rukmani is cooking rice alone. Kunthi is gaunt from starvation, no longer curvy and vivacious. She says her husband has left her for another woman. Rukmani takes pity, giving her a bowl of rice water, but Kunthi insists she must eat some rice to get the “bloom” back and be able to take care of herself. She refuses to beg from her married sons. Kunthi threatens to tell Nathan about Rukmani’s relationship with Kenny, which Kunthi suggests is sexual. Rukmani feels so upset and angry that she imagines killing Kunthi.
Rukmani gives in and hands over grain to the vulturous woman, reassuring herself of what she has left buried in a secret bundle outside. However, when she checks the bundle that night, there is barely a handful left. She accuses her children of taking it only to learn that Nathan did. He admits that he gave it to Kunthi, confessing that he fathered her sons and she threatened to tell Rukmani. Rukmani feels disbelief, disillusionment, anger, reproach, and pain. He says the first time was before their marriage. Rukmani admits to Kunthi’s extortion of her, and, both having admitted their secrets, “a new peace” comes to the couple, freed from their lies. After the last grain of rice is gone, the family survives on scraps they can find and the odd crab Nathan can catch at the river. Sometimes they resort to eating grass, though it leads to stomach cramps and retching. The family withers and thins as they starve; Kuti gets the worst of it, soothed only by Ira offering him her “parched teat.”
Rukmani’s son Raja is brought home dead, carried by two men. Rukmani is bewildered as they try to explain that he was caught stealing and died easily when “hands” were laid on him. Three days after the funeral, officials from the tannery explain that the watchmen were “only doing their duty” in protecting the tannery property. They say he stole a calfskin and was “merely tapped … with a lathi.” They warn her that she can’t make any compensation claim against them because Raja should not have struggled when he was caught. The men forcefully insist that they bear no responsibility, which Rukmani doesn’t dispute.
The family waits for the grain to be ready to harvest, worried Kuti will die before they have food again. However, Kuti miraculously gets better. One night Rukmani hears footsteps outside and believes shameless Kunthi is stealing from them again. Rukmani goes outside the hut in the gray darkness and attacks the figure until her husband and sons pull her off. It turns out to be Ira, who is bloodied from the assault. She is cut badly from glass bangles she wore on her wrists. Rukmani doesn’t understand how she has bangles. She washes Ira’s sari and a rupee falls from it into the water. Rukmani wonders how she got the money.
Inside the hut, Kuti cries out, waking Ira, who tells Rukmani to feed him with the money she has in her sari. Rukmani realizes she has been bringing Kuti back to health. Barely healed, Ira ties her sari tight and goes out to the village at night. When confronted, she boldly admits (without directly using the words) that she is seeing men for money. They insist she stop but she will not starve any longer. Soon enough Nathan and Rukmani get used to their daughter’s comings and goings, and she buys food that keeps the family alive. But Nathan refuses to eat any of the food Ira brings. Despite being fed milk, Kuti’s condition worsens until he loses sight and then dies in Rukmani’s arms.
The harvest is unusually abundant. Despite their grief, the starved family laughs as they pile up their rice and consider how they’ll more than be able to pay their debt. Rukmani plants vegetables again, eventually selling them to people who give her better prices and who are less condescending than Biswas. One day Biswas calls out to Rukmani that Kenny is back in the village, insinuating that there is something gossip-worthy about her relationship with Kenny.
Despite the anger she feels toward Biswas, Rukmani is happy to learn Kenny is back. She brings him flower garlands and a lime for luck. Upon arrival, he is cold initially, then warms up to her. When she asks about his family, he says his wife has left him and his children have forgotten him. Rukmani says Ira is finally pregnant, though the father could be any of a dozen men. She laments the shame of it, and Kenny scolds her for caring too much about “what people say.” She leaves thinking the comment over, and concluding that he is right.
Analysis
Markandaya builds further on the themes of poverty and resignation to suffering. While the flooding precipitated a period of starvation and inflated food prices, the drought is far more destructive for Rukmani’s family and their community. It’s possible the family could have managed until the next rice harvest, but their absentee landlord demands, through an intermediary, that they still pay rent for the year. Desperate not to be evicted, Nathan and Rukmani sell everything they can, scraping together just enough to satisfy the parasitic rent collector but leaving them with nothing to live on. Once again, Nathan and Rukmani accept the miserable, exploitative conditions of their lives as the will of god and suffer in silence.
During the famine that follows the drought, Kunthi solidifies her role as Rukmani’s nemesis by using Rukmani’s sense of shame about her fertility treatments against her. Threatening to reveal the truth to Nathan, Kunthi successfully blackmails Rukmani for the paltry amount of rice she has reserved. Rukmani complies because she knows she has divided the rice reserves in half, and will have enough to keep the family alive for another eight days.
But in an instance of situational irony, it turns out that Kunthi has got to the buried rice as well, having blackmailed Nathan. It is at this point that Rukmani learns her seemingly faithful and adoring husband has cheated on her with Kunthi and fathered the woman’s children. Nathan explains that the affair began before Rukmani came to the village to marry him. This revelation accounts for Kunthi’s antipathy toward Rukmani from the outset, and Kunthi’s insistence that Rukmani—the provisional midwife at the time—not be present for the birth of her first son. Although Rukmani feels immediate grief over the destabilizing news of Nathan’s betrayal, Rukmani takes his honesty as an occasion to confess to her own secret. Once the couple has exorcised their shame, they are able to move forward with a new and different sense of intimacy. Once again, the focus becomes survival.
The theme of resignation to suffering comes up again when Rukmani’s son Raja is killed by tannery guards who catch him stealing an animal skin—the desperate act of a starving boy. Tannery officials visit Rukmani’s home to dissuade her from attempting to file a compensation claim against the tannery for the wrongful death of her son. Rukmani is surprised by the notion, the idea having never even crossed her mind. As with every other misfortune, Rukmani is resigned to accept her sorrows without protest.
The themes of urbanization, poverty, and shame return when Rukmani accidentally discovers her daughter sneaking back home late at night. The that fact Ira has a rupee in her sari and is wearing glass bangles is explained by the revelation that Ira has been engaging in sex work with tannery workers—a situation made possible by the tannery’s urbanizing effect on the area. Once the secret is out, Ira insists that she must continue doing what she’s doing to avoid starvation—her own and Kuti’s. Though her parents attempt to exercise control over their daughter, they accept the unwanted development, just as they have every other.
