The Theme of Hunger and Poverty Portrayed with Social Cultural Economic Clash in Kamala Markandaya’s A Handful of Rice.

The Theme of Hunger and Poverty Portrayed with Social Cultural Economic clash in Kamalamarkandaya’s A Handful of Rice.

                                    C.KanagaSudha M.A.,M.Phil.

Assistant Professor, Dept. OF English

ArumugamPillaiSeethaiAmmal College

             Tiruppattur

A Handful of Rice portrays the socio-cultural economic clash more vividly than the previous novels.  Ravi had left his home in the village to seek a better existence in the city and is torn between both values and undergoes a crisis in character.  Once again Markandaya gives a graphic description of an Indian Village where its people “lived between bouts of genteel and acute poverty – the kind in which the weakest went to the wall, the old ones and the babies dying of tuberculosis, dysentery, the ‘falling fever’, ‘recurrent fever’ and any other names for what was basically, simply nothing but starvation. “Ravi like his brothers is given some learning by a father who believes that “better things than were due to a man who could read and write, better things than working with his hands for a pittance, things for instance like working in a government office for one hundred rupees per month and a pension when he retired”.  But in the city there was no job for them between coolie and clerk so that it was like a jungle of riff-raffs hanging around all day doing nothing.  And the father who had craved to have sons who would help him work in the fields is left to tend them himself.  He must mortgage portions of the fields to meet any contingency as he does before making a trip to the city of finalize Ravi’s marriage.

In the city, Ravi discovers that life for the poor is not different.  Economically they are as deprived, toiling hard for meagre wages; exploited by the rich towns people.  The English memsahibs and the Indian ones haggled over prices.  Apu, the old tailor, into whose house Ravi had forced himself one night in a state of drunkenness when chased by the police, treats his clients as little gods.  He works hard to please them, bribes their watchmen to be allowed into those big houses with marble floors and cool interiors, is made to use the backstairs like sweepers but he does not complain.  Neither does his daughter Nalini, whom Ravi loves and marries.  She believes that people of their kind cannot hope to be so rich.  But Ravi rebels against such economic disparity.  He knows that the rich belong to the same class the world over “ “the sameness makes them stick together.”  It was economic stability that made them use that commanding tone.  It was their money that brought them the power to do the pushing around.  The Memsahib who had a lot of clothes stitched in India because “things were so cheap here…. Knew she would never be able to afford so many clothes once she left India.”  She had no sympathy for the workman who made this possible.  On Apu’s death when Ravitakes over his work and explains the delay in the delivery, she is not prepared to accept his reasons for the delay.  Ravi reflects on her callousness “ “Did this woman realize how they lived? The duties and ceremonies that fell upon the head of the house? In her community, he wondered, did they simply carry straight on after a death as if nothing happened?”  He felt convinced that “nothing lays down they should always have the best and trample over us and do us down and we should always come off worst”.  The town was associated with such evils that were considered a western impact.

Socially and culturally the tailor Apu has not been changed by the town.  He had hoped for a son like any farmer in the village to help him with his trade.  His home in the city is full of relatives who do not work and live off him.  Apu does not complain and never thinks of “booting out” any relative.  But to the rebel Ravi, in his degenerated phase when all that matters is money, these relatives are parasites and he shows them the door.  He soon realizes the advantage of the old system but only after much harm is done.  In the initial stages Ravi had seen some of the advantages in the system when he began to fall in love with Apu’s young daughter Nalini.  Marriages in India are not founded on love, as Jayamma’s showed.  She was much younger than Apu and did not love him.  But in his illness she nursed him “devotedly as a wife should out of a strong sense of duty.” In the village “Young men came to know young girls within the approving carefully conducted circle of mutual friends and family relationships”.  A strict watch was kept on the girls unlike the shameless ways of Europeans and Americans.  Women had information on girls who came of age and boys looking for brides went back and forth to arrange marriages.  The living together of all the members had advantages; you were never left stranded.  Ravi, when he forsakes this, finds himself alone, desperate, unhappy, “a fish out of water”.  He has an incestuous relationship with his mother-in-law, beats his wife Nalini whom he had loved dearly.  But “who cares what goes on between four walls? It’s the public scandal that breaks one in two?” The author comments on the sham and hypocrisy of social values.  Once Ravi’s intrinsic innocence is lost he becomes one of the jungle, that is, the city, at whose feet all the evils have been dumped.

The novel mainly deals with the themes of poverty and hunger.  Poverty is the keynote of Indian village life. 

Most of the people in Indian villages are poor as the villages do not offer any opportunity to the people to earn a better livelihood.  Most of the villagers are the victims of poverty.  They can only think about how to earn bread and butter.  Education, good health and entertainment are only dreams to them.  Their old ones and babies are dying of tuberculosis, dysentery and the recurrent fever.  People in villages live below poverty line.  “He (Ravi) knew better the economics of village life, knew the superhuman efforts, the begging and the borrowing that went into raising the train fare, the money for the extras demanded by pride and the standard of a city.  His father had managed it once, where many men like him never managed it at all”.

Coming to the city, Ravi is disillusioned that for a poor man there is no difference between a city and a village.  An illiterate or under educated villager is only suitable for manual labour.  Here also he is exploited.  Ravi and Apu get 80 rupees for one dozen jackets while the shop-owners sell one jacket for 125 rupees.  Knowing this fact, Ravi loses his temper, “he and his like perennially scratching around for a living, while they sat still and waxed fat on huge peremptory margins.” Ravi has to give up all his ambitions.  His dreams never come true.  After Apu’s death his economic condition worsens.  Apu and Ravi’s son Raju die because they are not properly cured for want of money.  Finally, we find the hero struggling for a handful of rice.

Poverty gives birth to hunger and starvation.  At the very outset of the novel when we introduced the hero, he is very hungry.  He goes to Apu’s house and says that he is very hungry.  He wants a meal.  He is on the verge of starvation.  Fruits are rarity for Ravi and Apu’s family.  Ravi’s friend Damodar’s stomach is ‘lean and curved inward.”  All he wants is a meal.  After Apu’s death, Ravi has to sell many things from the house just to satisfy his and his family’s hunger.  Just to satisfy his hunger he leaves his village, comes to the city and is involved in petty criminal activities.  Afterwards he works very hard in Apu’s house, first as his assistant and later as his successor.  In spite of hard work he is unable to live a better life.  His dreams always remain dreams.

Bibliography

Primary Source

            Markandaya, Kamala, A Handful of Rice, Orient Paperbacks, New Delhi, 1966. Print

Secondary Sources

Geeta, P  KamalaMarkandaya :  A Interpretation, Common Wealth Quarterly ;  Vol.3        No.9, 1978, PP 101-102 Print.

            Iyenger, K.R.S. Indian Writing in English, Asia Publishing House, 1962. Print.

        Jha, Rekha, The Novels of Kamala Markandaya, Prestige Books: Patel Nagar, New                                   Delhi, 1990, Print.