Poverty
Poverty—the state of lacking sufficient money to live comfortably—is a dominant theme in Nectar In A Sieve. Markandaya explores the subject through her depiction of a peasant family living for three decades in a remote, poverty-stricken Indian village. Locals live in mud-and-dung huts without running water or electricity. As tenant farmers, Rukmani and Nathan do not own the land on which they cultivate rice and vegetables; instead, they pay a yearly sum to Sivaji, the rent collector for a landowner they never meet. When drought decimates the year's harvest, Nathan opines that the landowner sends a go-between so he doesn't have to witness the abject poverty in which his tenants live. Because Rukmani and most of her neighbors subsist on the food they can grow, a year without a harvest leads to widespread starvation. In this impoverished context, the tannery, with its higher but still-low wages, draws young men away from their family farms. However, Markandaya shows how the tannery owners, like the landowners, exploit the impoverished laborers by refusing to pay higher wages; as the only industry in the area, the tannery sets whatever terms of employment it deems fit. When the tannery owners buy the land Rukmani and Nathan rent, the couple lose what little money they have on a futile journey to move in with one of their sons. To afford the cost of the trip back, Nathan—already an old man at fifty—breaks rocks in a quarry until he collapses and dies. In this way, Markandaya shows how extreme poverty leads not only to constant fear, suffering, and exploitation, but to starvation and death.
Grief
Grief is another major theme in the novel. Defined as deep sorrow provoked by the loss of someone or something, grief first arises in the book's opening lines when Rukmani comments on how she sometimes imagines that her husband, Nathan, is still with her. The grief over Nathan's death provides an occasion for Rukmani to narrate the events of the story, which covers the three decades she is married to him. Grief also arises when Rukmani loses two children—Kuti and Raja—during the famine. Though the family goes through the standard Hindu cremation rituals, Rukmani has too little emotional and physical strength to fully access her sorrow. Markandaya also explores the theme of grief in passages where Rukmani laments what has been lost in her rapidly modernizing milieu. Ultimately, Rukmani observes that she gets used to these changes, despite the feelings of mournfulness they first provoke. Even the tannery, whose arrival Rukmani greets with outrage, is absorbed into the background of her life as she comes to accept great losses as inevitable.
Urbanization
Urbanization—the process of developing an area into something more characteristic of a city or town—is a key theme in Nectar In A Sieve. When she first marries Nathan, Rukmani moves to his unnamed remote rural Hindu village. While there is a village center with a market, the area is little more than a collection of rice paddies and farms where humble peasants live in mud huts. The bucolic environment is suddenly transformed with the introduction of a tannery, a factory-like brick building where animal skins are turned into leather by workers not from the village. Beyond workers and their families, the new industry brings with it people from different religious backgrounds (Sikhs and Muslims), inflated prices for food and goods, and vices like gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Rukmani observes how the tannery displaces villagers by running people out of business, as happens to Janaki's husband, or by buying up surrounding farmland, as eventually happens to Rukmani and Nathan. The tannery also draws young men away from their family farms with higher wages that greatly elevate a peasant's standard of living. When the tannery buys Rukmani's and Nathan's land from the landowner, the couple travel to a distant city, soon finding themselves sleeping in a temple while earning money breaking rocks in a quarry. The miserable experience of the couple's homelessness and sense of anonymity in a big city shows how there is no place for people like Rukmani and Nathan in a rapidly urbanizing India.
Resignation to Suffering
Resignation to suffering is another important theme in the novel. Defined as accepting pain, distress, or hardship as inevitable, resignation to suffering first arises as a theme when Rukmani comments on the discomfort of consummating her arranged marriage to Nathan. At only twelve years old, Rukmani isn't sexually mature, describing herself as "a pained and awkward child." But Rukmani quickly moves past the subject, perceiving it simply as a rite of passage she is expected to endure as a woman. When Rukmani arrives at the farm where Nathan has been constructing mud huts for them to live in, her knees buckle, as if in shock at the step down in living standards. However, she insists to her husband that it suits her well to live there. As she adjusts to life as a farmer's wife, Rukmani shows immense courage and resilience as she keeps a growing brood of children alive on an incredibly meager income. She and Nathan frustrate their sons when they accept their landlord's exploitative rent demands, and Rukmani can't believe it when her sons stage a worker's strike at the tannery, her attitude being that they must accept whatever conditions their superiors impose. Even when her son Raja is killed by tannery officials, Rukmani doesn't make a compensation claim, accepting the situation with far more dignity than the officials who speak with her. Markandaya addresses the theme most directly when Kenny frustratingly calls Rukmani and her people "acquiescent imbeciles," insisting that she and her starving neighbors "must cry out" if they want help. Rukmani politely explains that Hindu priests "fast, and inflict on themselves severe punishments." She says that followers of the faith are instructed to bear sorrows without complaint "so that the soul may be cleansed." In this way, Markandaya shows how Rukmani's religious principles lead to a sense of pride and perseverance while simultaneously making her susceptible to exploitation.
Gender Roles
In Nectar In A Sieve, Markandaya explores the gender-based cultural expectations in Rukmani's milieu as a poor Hindu woman living in the first half of the twentieth century. The major theme of gender roles enters the story when Rukmani reflects on how, at twelve years old, an arranged marriage with Nathan brought her away from her family and everyone she knew. Rukmani accepts that her family and society expect her to fulfill the role of farmer's wife, and she doesn't balk at suddenly being burdened with the responsibilities of an adult despite being a child. Rukmani learns how to perform her duties—which include patching her hut with dung, cooking, milking, and planting—from local wives like Janaki and Kali. Rukmani also takes it for granted that a woman should provide her husband with many sons. When Ira is born a girl, both Rukmani and Nathan are disappointed, as they perceive a girl to be only a draw on their savings as they have to put money for her dowry. Her desire to give birth to sons leads her to seek fertility treatments from Kenny, a fact she hides from Nathan for fear he will judge her for needing a white man's intervention in fulfilling what is expected of her as a woman. Men, meanwhile, are expected to provide for their wives and children through hard work; this cultural expectation sends most of Rukmani's sons to seek jobs far away as they know they must prove themselves to be providers if they wish to have a wife and children. Ultimately, Markandaya depicts a society in which rigid gender roles determine a person's options in life from infancy.
Motherhood
Alongside the theme of gender roles is motherhood. As a woman, Rukmani believes it is her duty to give birth to many children—sons in particular, as men are more highly valued in Rukmani's cultural context. Although Rukmani fails to conceive for six years following her first child, Kenny's unspecified fertility treatments help her have many sons. The theme of motherhood also arises when Ira's husband "returns" her to the family after five years of marriage in which they haven't conceived a child. Nathan comments that he understands the husband's reasoning, as a man "needs sons." Rukmani knows that the public's perception of Ira as infertile will make it difficult or impossible for her to find a new husband, so she intervenes and gets Kenny to administer fertility treatments. Ira does eventually becomes a mother. However, her experience of motherhood is markedly different from Rukmani's, as Ira conceives her son while engaging in sex work. Despite the uncertainty about the child's paternity and the cultural prejudice against his albinism, Ira treats her son as inherently deserving of love and commits herself to raising him in the village.
Shame
Shame—a painful feeling of dishonor or embarrassment—is another vital theme in Nectar In A Sieve. Markandaya addresses the theme most explicitly through Rukmani's secret fertility consultations with Kenny. Fearing judgment, Rukmani doesn't tell Nathan (or anyone) about the treatments, which enable her to conceive many sons. Antagonistic figures such as Kunthi and Biswas torment Rukmani by insinuating that they know about her relationship with Kenny; Rukmani's shame is so great that she complies with Kunthi's extortion during the famine. However, when Nathan reveals that he fathered Kunthi's sons—his own shameful secret—Rukmani finds herself able to reveal what she has been hiding from him. The confessions bring about a new sense of intimacy between Rukmani and Nathan once they have both rid themselves of shame.
