Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

Kamala Markandaya employs herself with the basic concern of an environmentalist or ecologist by lamenting over the destruction of landscape with in her literary milieu. Eco criticism or eco critics endeavor to speak for nature and thereby try to understand and address the problems of human cohabitation with nature. It investigates how the artist utilizes nature literally and metaphorically. Markandaya’s debut novel Nectar in a Sieve, recoup and retrieve the mislaid connection between man and land. Her protagonist Rukmani like her, can be acknowledged as an ‘invisible environmentalist’ since both are skeptical to obdurate industrialization or urbanization and raise voice to preserve nature even in their acute crisis. This paper attempts to analyze how the novelist through her personae, reveals the growth of fanatic industrialization boosting the marginalization of the subalterns by further ruining their landscape and livelihoods.

Key words: Eco criticism, Nature, Human, Environment

Literature has always been the best medium that has explored the inseparable relationship between man and nature. The youngest of movements, eco-criticism or eco critics endeavor to speak for nature and thereby try to understand and address the problems of human cohabitation with nature. It “takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies” (Glotfelty xix) and investigates how the artist utilizes nature literally and metaphorically. An artist always apprehends something mysterious in the world and to comprehend it he/she uses various signs in his/her artistry. Kamala Markandaya employs herself with the basic concern of an environmentalist or ecologist through her narrative by lamenting over the destruction of landscape with in her literary mi...

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..., the premise of this eco aesthetic blend seems relevant, as we are in the verge of acute ecological crisis where the survival of humanity depends on the sensitive and harmonious treatment of nature.

Works Cited

1. Bhatnagar, Anil Kumar. Kamala Markandaya: A Thematic Study. New Delhi: Sarup and Sons. 1995. Print.

2. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

3. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary

Ecology. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.

4. Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. 1954. New York: Signet Classic, 1982. Print.

5. Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Survival in India. New Delhi: Zed P, 1998. Print.

6. V, Rajakrishnan, Ujjwaj Jana, ed. The Green Symphony. New Delhi: Sarup, 2011. Print.