Why a Booktrail?
A family struggles with poverty and globalisation in India
Nectar in a Sieve
What you need to know before your trail
What might at first seem like a moving story of a peasant woman in India is so much more then this – it’s a story about a poor woman in a primitive village whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loved. Her struggles and determination are similar to those India is undergoing at the time.
Travel Guide
The life of a peasant woman living in a remote Hindu village in India is never going to be an easy read for her struggles are complex and constant. Rukmani lives in a village with no name – so no booktrailing possibilities there – but this makes it more anonymous, more intriguing and representative of the country itself. A country struggling and changing and the effects of the British rule there. In fact one of the characters – Kennington or Kenny – is an English doctor working in the area but who remains remote from the country he is said to respect and want to help. He rarely seems to fully understand those he is there to help and recover and so could he be a symbol of the British in India?
His view point and attitude in the country is interesting to say the least.
Rukmani tells a sad and poignant story of her life and of her family . All thorough her life (she is close to death now and very very old) she has had to put honour and family expectations, duty, above all else. A forced marriage starts her life struggles and we go through them with her
I had seen the slow, calm beauty of our village wilt in the blast from town and I grieved no more; so now I accepted the future and Ira’s lot in it…
How Rukmani and undoubtedly other women like here managed and struggled on is a testament to their belief in doing what they felt was right and what they had to do for the good of their family.
How people with nothing make good of their lives and struggle to keep their families fed and their future open to possibilities. Made us think and reflect on Rukmani and all the other Rukmanis in the world.
Where Next?
