Summary
Rukmani’s son Selvam, despite his knowledge and experience, cannot farm successfully. One day he throws down his spade and tells his mother that he intends to work as Kenny’s assistant when Kenny builds a hospital; he has already been offered the job and training. Rukmani is surprised to learn of the project.
Rukmani goes to Kenny to thank him. Kenny shows her blueprints, saying that he has raised thousands of rupees in his home country to build the hospital. He scolds Rukmani for her and her people’s refusal to ask for help when they are giving birth to children in gutters and dying in the street. She says that in their culture they are taught to bear sorrows in silence so that “the soul may be cleansed.” Kenny strikes his forehead in frustration.
Rukmani prepares a bamboo-fenced birthing section of the hut for Ira. During the labor, Rukmani worries about Ira’s lack of a husband and what the child will be like, having been fathered by who knows who. The baby boy is healthy, but pale-to-translucent, and with pink eyes. Nathan comments on how he cowers from the sun, and worries about what this means for the boy’s future. Word travels, bringing visitors who come to gawk at the baby’s albinism. When Kali comments to Ira that baby Sacrabani isn’t normal-looking, 17-year-old Selvam shames the adults in the room, telling them there is no reason to have prejudice against the child simply because he is a different color.
Construction begins on the hospital. Kenny and Selvam are enthusiastic in their involvement in the building, but unaware that it will take seven years to finish. Rukmani comments that Old Granny dies of starvation in the street before the hospital is completed. From Nathan and Selvam Rukmani learns that in other countries there are such things as “soup kitchens”—places that feed the poor for free.
While Selvam never treats Sacrabani as any different from other children, the boy is always singled out for bullying and isolation. One day, he asks his mother what a bastard is. She says that it’s a child a mother does not wish for, then says that she wished for him. In her daughter’s voice, Rukmani can hear the guilt of her attempted abortions. Ira lies and says Sacrabani’s father is away and will visit one day. She sends him away and tells him not to ask so many questions.
At fifty, Nathan’s health suffers, leaving Rukmani to do the more difficult work on the farm. Kenny visits and says that Nathan cannot survive on plain rice day after day; Rukmani reminds him that they can only eat well when the harvest is good. Kenny also says that he worries too much. Kenny questions Rukmani about whether she plans for her future while she still can. He then admits that he doesn’t know why he asked; no one as poor as the villagers has the luxury of saving for the future. Rukmani says they are in God’s hands and he need not concern himself so much.
Nathan’s condition improves, but six months later, Sivaji arrives to tell Nathan that the tannery owners are buying the land. They have been given two weeks' notice to leave the land they have been working for thirty years. Rukmani comments that she always knew the tannery would be their undoing; she just didn’t know how exactly. When they tell Selvam that night, he asks if they just accepted the injustice of it without protest. Nathan says they will have to go live with their son Murugan, who is married and has been working as a servant in a town hundreds of miles away. Rukmani is reluctant to accept the truth that no landowner would lease to a man Nathan’s age. Ira and Selvam say they will stay in the village. Ira says everyone is used to her and her son here. Selvam will provide for Ira and Sacrabani.
Rukmani packs food, dung fuel cakes, a billows, rolled straw mats, and a few light cooking vessels for her and Nathan’s journey by bullock (cattle) cart. The journey is long and dusty and uncomfortable. Eventually the cart driver lets the couple off in their son’s city. They walk alongside the road, bewildered by the cacophony of city sounds.
The couple learns that their son’s street is fifteen miles away still, and halfway there take refuge in a temple that offers food and shelter for the night. In the pushing dash to be served rice and dhal, Rukmani and Nathan leave their bundles of possessions unattended. Their things are stolen. Rukmani falls asleep reassured by the thought that she’ll spend a little of the money she has on cooking vessels; she will not turn up at her daughter-in-law’s empty-handed.
Analysis
Markandaya returns to the theme of urbanization with the revelation that Rukmani’s son Selvam has accepted a job as Kenny’s medical assistant. Kenny has raised money back in England to build a hospital in the village, which is quickly transforming into a town. Although Selvam’s career move represents another son’s rejection of the family’s farming tradition, economic and social forces beyond Rukmani’s control have brought about the situation.
Markandaya explicitly addresses the theme of resignation to suffering when Rukmani visits Kenny to discuss the hospital project. The English doctor returns to one of his favorite themes, lamenting Rukmani’s people’s inclination to live in squalor and let the powerful exploit them without protest. Rukmani explains that, in her Hindu faith, it is a custom to bear one’s sorrows in silence. In this way, she concedes that the quality Kenny dislikes is a central tenant of their faith, as they believe that suffering is doing the work of cleansing the soul. For Rukmani, it is a virtue to resign oneself to suffering.
The theme of motherhood arises when Ira gives birth to a son whose father could be any of the clients who have paid her for sex. In an instance of situational irony, Kenny’s fertility treatments have been successful; however, the nontraditional conception is a source of shame for Rukmani. Rukmani also superstitiously perceives the boy’s albinism—a relatively rare condition in which a person or animal is born without pigment in the skin and eyes—to be a sign that the child is marked from birth as abnormal. However, Ira takes to motherhood competently and eagerly, seeing her son as just as worthy of love as any child.
The themes of poverty and resignation to suffering come up again when Kenny questions Rukmani about her and Nathan’s plans for the future. As subsistence farmers, the couple doesn’t have the luxury of planning for their retirement; all they can do is toil year after year on land that doesn’t belong to them, hoping the weather and gods will be good to them. Kenny apologizes for broaching the subject, as he knows that none of the poor villagers are capable of accruing any meaningful wealth with all their surplus labor going to pay the rent.
Markandaya builds on the theme of urbanization when Sivaji, the rent collector, arrives out of the blue to tell Nathan and Rukmani that they have two weeks to vacate the land they have been cultivating for three decades. Just as Rukmani predicted, the tannery has subsumed their farmland, purchasing it out from under them as the business expands its reach. With no recourse to protest the development, and no money saved, the couple accepts the unjust situation and seeks shelter from the only son they believe can afford to support them.
