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The main character Rukmani, married at the age of twelve, endures hardship
after hardship through the trials of constant poverty, all without complaining.
Rukmani, the daughter of a village chief, expected a big wedding. However, with
the coming of white men during early British colonization, her father’s
status was reduced to figurehead. Without much of a dowry, she as a twelve-year-old
girl was married to a poor farmer named Nathan. Her marriage is a lucky one,
because her husband loves her. Nathan is more or less faithful to the traditional
gods, but it is the faith of the ignorant who don't know what or why they worship.
He has more interest in his crops and his family than the complex tenets of
his religion.
At first, things aren’t so bad. They live about a five hour walk north
of Mumbai (Bombay), there is a good harvest, and her neighbors are nice. However,
Rukmani waited for years to get pregnant, without success. Finally, she went
to Kenny, the white Christian doctor who helped the people for free. With the
help of his medicine she became pregnant with a girl, Irawaddy. She was disappointed
that her first child was a girl, but loved her anyway. After seven more years
of nothing, she visited Kenny again and began bearing a child almost every year.
She gave birth to five more sons.
Rukmani had been taught to read and write, and although her husband was illiterate,
he didn’t forbid her the practice as he very well could have. As with
all farmers, times are good when it rains and bad when it doesn’t. Rukmani
and Nathan go through a period of abundance, and then comes a long draught from
which everything steadily goes downhill. They nearly die from starvation, and
only just make it. Two of their sons go to work for the white men in the tannery.
Irawaddy succeeds in getting married even though she has a very scant dowry,
but her husband later leaves her because she can’t bear children.
Both Irawaddy and a neighbor woman go into prostitution to feed their families.
Without the money they bring in, the children would die. Irawaddy has an albino
baby while unwedded and is shunned by the village.
Two of Rukmani’s sons move away chasing work, and one goes to work for
Kenny to support Irawaddy and her baby. Nathan and Rukmani move to the city
to try to find work and/or their sons. Throughout everything that goes wrong,
Rukmani accepts it with a gentleness of spirit that does credit to her upbringing.
At first, Rukmani works as a scribe, but this vocation peters out in the end
and she and her husband eventually end up all but adopting a little street boy,
and find work breaking stones. Nathan dies while working from an unknown disease
he picked up in the city. Rukmani moves back to her village, having not found
her sons, and spends the rest of her gentle life in the same poverty as always.
Her whole story is one of acceptance and optimism in the face of anything. Life
in India was hard, but with five sons, a daughter and a loving husband, Rukmani
saw the world with the perception that something good was bound to happen. Rampant
poverty, prostitution, hunger and barrenness did nothing to shake the heart
of this girl, and her example to Christians is one that should be valued.
Though the natural bent was optimistic, Markandaya portrayed everything in an
accurate light. Even colonialism was protrayed even handedly as good that comes
out of certain evils. The history contained in the book as well as the faith
should be appreciated. It wasn’t glossed over in the way one might expect
such a quiet woman to have done. Markandaya gives one all of the painful details
within a tragic story and yet leaves one feeling good about it, rather than
just sad. Overall, the calm nature of the character Rukmani, and the whole tone
and structure of the book can best be summed up in the last line, when in speaking
of Nathan’s death, she said, “It was a gentle passing. I will tell
you later.”
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