Humanistic Concerns
in Kamala Markandaya’s A Handful of Rice
Dr. Monika Malhotra
Associate Prof. in English
Govt. SPMR College of Commerce
Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Abstract:
This
paper examines Kamala Markandaya’s perception that life is to be lived within
the bounds of moral values and societal fabric. The paper is about the struggle
to survive, a struggle that usually overpowers the poverty stricken masses of
India. The protagonist Ravi, a rural peasant moves to the city to escape the
vicious cycle of starvation in his village. His tryst with conscience echoes
his roots still delved in Indian values and the final choice made by him to
choose not to rob is the expression of humanism at his best. The main character
walks a tightrope between individual rebellion and acceptance of social
expectations . In the modern era of
individualism and rationality, one is always pitted against the traditional
ethical ethos. There is always a struggle going on in the mind of the
individual between just and unjust or between moral and immoral. The character
in the novel struggles, suffers, grows and matures to own his responsibility
and in the end chooses values affirming faith in life .The final triumph of
moral and social responsibility over the selfish interests is the real focus of
the paper.
Key words: Humanism,
Rationalism, Responsibility, Morality, Values
Kamala Markandaya’s novel A Handful of Rice (1966) explores the dilemma of common everyman.
It is about the struggle to survive, a struggle that usually overpowers the
poverty stricken masses of India .In the novel, the protagonist walks a
tightrope between the sense of right and wrong and finally his tryst ending in
choosing values is the real humanistic concern in this paper. Ravi Shanker, the
protagonist’s dilemma is the dilemma of two values – the ethical ideals and new
pragmatic rational approach .The novel is truly his journey from sub human world
of crime to the world of conscience and ethical values as propounded by Herrick
in his book Humanism, ‘it (humanism) brings values and meaning into
life’ (1).
As the title indicates the novel is about want, hunger
and poverty but this theme takes a different direction as it depicts the
discontentment and frustration of the hero. The novel begins and ends with his
struggle for food and represents the same themes as in the novels So Many
Hungers and He Who Rides a Tiger by the novelist Bhabani Bhattacharaya.
In 1950’s, the mass exodus from the villages to the cities and with that the
need for handful of rice changed the face of villages. Ravi, son of poor farmer
in the village leaves the life of penury in a hope of better living in Madras.
As he has meager education he can neither pick up the work which he can do with
his hands nor can become a clerk. The
transition coming in the country after independence and the problem of exodus
in search of employment in the town by the youth from rural to urban are the
humanistic concerns which are described
by the novelist as
And yet, somewhere a leaven must have been at
work, a restlessness, a discontent in the towns whose spores had spread even as
far as the villages so that suddenly it was not good enough and first one home
and then another began to lose its sons, young men like him who felt obscurely
than it was not right for them and this with conviction – that it would be
utterly wrong for their children. (12)
In Humanist Manifesto 2000, Paul Kurtz too enumerates
the problem of unemployment as “Many governments of the world are facing severe
economic problems as cities overflow with immigrants from the countryside; vast
numbers of them are unemployed and barely able to subsist.”(18)The villagers in
the years after independence under the impact of industrialization took bold
steps to migrate from their home lands for the fulfillment of their dreams as
they found villages full of poverty. The
miserable condition of the villages is described in the novel as
had all 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. (12)
The youth who come for better living and in search of identity feel that it is lost
forever in the impersonal and cruel atmosphere of the cities. They realize that
the life in the urban areas is very harsh, cruel, callous and unimaginative.
Ravi too becomes some of the several thousands who throng to the cities for the
foothold in a life but get disillusioned. The cities too like the villages have
nothing to offer poor people like Ravi
He had left his family, a long time ago-three
years was it ?-as his brothers had done, as all the young men he knew had done
or wanted to do, joining the exodus to the cities because their village had
nothing to offer them. The cities had nothing either, although they did not
discover this until they arrived: but it held out before them like an
incandescent carrot the hope that one day, some day, there would be something
(25-26).
The
novelist’s humanistic concern is to bring fore that there are deaths in
villages due to starvation, lack of medical facilities. In his endeavour to put
an end to his hunger and to procure a handful of rice, he plunges deep into the
tumultuous world of urban life but he soon gets trapped into the criminal world
a world shot with glitter and excitement: a world that revived the
incandescent glow the city had once kindled; and suddenly the terror and the
loneliness were gone, lifted from the load whose other components were hunger,
the lassitude of hunger, and the terror of losing his identity in an indifferent
city which was akin to death. Of course much of this world, this dazzling
world, lay in the future: but every kind of fear and privation became bearable
in the light of its bright promise. (27)
He drowns his values and gets carried away by the world
of smugglers, bootleggers and black marketeers. Though he joins the gang of
hooligans and criminals yet on seeing Nalini he feels a desire to have his own
house.
If I had a wife, he thought as he ate, she
would cook for me, it would be like this every day….but what had he to offer to
get himself a wife?.....I’ll buy her a little house, small but nice, he thought
as he finished, and some nice new shiny aluminium cooking vessels, these brass
things are too heavy, old-fashioned….and with a job one can save say a quarter
of one’s wage (11)
His desire to live a respectable life and have family is
a step towards leading a moral life. Commenting on morality, Jim Herrick in his
book Humanism says, “morality arises
because humans are essentially social animals… The social nature of humans
creates the need for morality, not from a god but from the nature of human
self-responsibility and social inter-relations.”(21) Ravi at this point chooses
values and the life of domesticity to material affluence. Meera Panigrahi in Humanism
and Culture observes that in humanism, “the emphasis is not upon the
materials that bring order, comfort, freedom, wealth and general well-being,
but upon human values that guide his course in life” (21).
Ravi’s coming to Apu’s home to steal but his staying
there as assistant, marrying the daughter of the house and on the death of the
householder to become indispensable master is similar to Malamud’s The Assistant. Every time he chooses to
be honest, he is tempted towards his world of easy money. This way he clings
not only to his ‘precious little’ but also to his moral commitment to his
values though tempted time to time. First time when Jayamma gives him five
rupees for the repair of window bars and when it costs nothing since Kannan his
friend repaired them free. He resists and returns the money to Jayamma
By the time he reached the blacksmith the
money had begun to burn a hole in his pocket. There was a lot he could buy for
five rupees, the things that he needed over and above basic props like food which
was all that his earnings ever ran to before his energies expired.(20)
This turn in life proves that the rebel in him is not so
much against the values. The sense of sacrifice for Nalini is reflected as,
“She was worth it, worth anything, even worth giving up the sweet life for. He
put it all on her, forgetting the trinity of hunger, drink and misery that had
been intermittent companion to his sweet life”. (40) Once he enters the world
of morality, he plunges deep and deep into it but he soon finds that the
economics of urban life remains beyond his understanding. The increasing number
of family members in a large family disturbs Apu’s economics. Moreover with the
coming of new technology and the growth of the textile mills, the machine
production starts posing threat to the tailoring business of the skilled
workers like Apu. Ravi’s rationalism makes him agitated at this exploitation
but Apu tells him the law of ‘the survival of the fittest’. Ravi as a young
rebel finds it difficult to reconcile with this disproportion and injustice. He
wishes to get all the comforts but is helpless because of limited earning
Ravi would have liked this steady wage to be
higher. He wanted to buy a bed, a nice new sari for Nalini, material for some
smart new shirts for himself, a safety razor, a mouth organ(all the old gang
had had either mouth organs or flutes), and sundry other essentials and
luxuries the list of which grew daily long. The longing for them grew too: and
from constant denial affected him like a deficiency disease.(67)
He develops an
urge to fulfill his responsibilities towards wife and children he wants to
rebel but cannot. Again he gets torn between freedom and social
responsibilities. His respectability to hold on the values makes him a social
victim
But what could he do within the narrow frame
of respectability he had slung round his neck like a penance? Rebel and a
contract might be lost, the steady wage would come to an end and then what of
Nalini? He had to think of her, he had to think of himself for that matter.
There seemed to be no answer. (70)
Torn between his commitment to his family as its
financial provider and the corrupting socio-economic system, the city grins
toothlessly on him and rebooks his conscience .Ravi’s rationalism makes him
aware of the reality of the hardships of the jungle and to add to his miseries,
Apu’s illness and sudden death puts entire burden of the family on him.. His
sources dwindled and the graph of his good work which at one time held his
esteem high starts falling. He loses his
job in the hospital and to add to this further hike in the prices of essential
commodities makes the condition worse. The back-log of debts and arrears grow
heavier day by day and now he wants to be a free man. His wobbling and wavering
between right and wrong, between just and unjust is depicted in the novel as
If thinking of Damodar roused a sour and
self-critical fretfulness, Nalini invariably restored his peace. She was so
affectionate, so gay, with her soft tender ways that were like a caress, that
when she was near he could even feel a little sorry for Damodar, who had no
wife, who could not know what it was like to have someone like Nalini by his
side. Sometimes it baffled him, this curious shift in the emphasis on what was
and what was not important to him, making him wonder who and what he really was
under all those feelings and counter feelings.(118)
Ravi with Damodar forgets all his miseries for shorter
period, “the struggle was over”, he thought, “help was at hand, soon he too
would be sipping the sweet carefree life” (216). He wants to join him but his
dilemma to switch to immoral life as compared to moral one is portrayed by
novelist as:
What held him back? Had respectability
entered his soul, smirched it with the shoddy morality of a hypocritical
society? Slough it off, join hands with Damodar. But they were dirty hands,
hands that grew rich by squeezing, people’s throats. People like him. People
like his wife. (217)
Prompted by his conscience, he again rejects Damodar’s
proposition. Commenting on Ravi’s plight caught in old traditions and new
glitter of the modern city, Srinivas Iyengar observes:
Caught between the pull of the old tradition
that all but strangles him and the pull of the new immorality that attracts as
well as frightens him, Ravi lurches now this side now the other side and has
the worst of both. (446)
Tortured by his dilemma of conscience, he resorts to
violence; he starts suspecting the chastity of Nalini and turns into a
wife-beater. It is very pathetic when he loses his son Raju. Raju on the verge
of the death asks him question, “Do you still like me? … why do you like me?”
(229)He is thinking of providing comforts to his children and Nalini but in his
endeavour to achieve this, his son in lack of proper treatment and proper food.
His son’s death is pathetically described as
Terror was beating at Ravi, paralyzing wings,
but he fought it off and gathered his child to him and held him tightly,
feeling the kicking muscles and nerves as if they were joined to his own tortured
body, not putting him down until that ceased.(229-30)
Ravi turns speechless when he dies as he feels that it is
not he but the society in which he lives is responsible for the death of his
beloved son. Tortured by abject penury, Nalini quietly leaves her husband after
her son’s death and goes to her sister’s place. Ravi realizes that this society
is so inconsiderate that honesty pays nothing. He develops hatred against
society represented by the European memsahibs, the policemen and the rich. “Did
I-? Was it my-? and her silence. And saying to her, with a queer obstinate
clarity: I don’t blame myself for not getting the doctor. I blame them. Them.
Society. Guilty of casual murder” (231).Though the death of his son completely
shatters him but he does not lose hope and takes life as a challenge. Ravi leaves no stone unturned to make his
both ends meet but in this world of transition, he lags behind. All his efforts
to make his life comfortable shatter
like the card’s house.
Betrayed by society, he again wants to go to Damodar to
fulfill his unfulfilled desires. This time Damodar rejects him and mocks at him
saying, “You’re empty. No heart, no spleen, no lights, no guts. Something’s
been at them’. He began to laugh, a high sharp ugly laughter. ‘What was it,
termites?’” (232). Poverty and frustration again make him rebel and he now
joins a hunger march. The voices coming from the crowd “Rice today, rice. Rice
today, rice!”(233) make him conscious of the purpose of the march. Now, rice is
that all matters for him “a handful of rice becomes a minuscular concrete
symbol of his dream that draws him with a surging crowd to the rice godown”
(Dhawan106). He pulls out the gunny bags of rice from the store Eve where he
and Apu once worked and were exploited. His conscience is once again jolted by
Kannan, the blacksmith who reminds him of the crime he is going to commit,
“Ravi, keep out!’ Kannan cried again, ‘The rice is for all, this way is wrong,
this way the innocent suffer!’”(235) His existential urge makes him think that
it is his right to get whatever he desires. He thinks of throwing a stone at
the store “but suddenly he could not. The strength that had inflamed him, the
strength of a suppressed, laminated anger, ebbed as quickly as it has risen.
His hand dropped”(237).
Conscience again forbids him to do so. Ironically, his
start turns out to be his end. Throughout the novel, he is moving between
values or no values. Jim Herrick too believes that “Moral instinct and moral
values in society are very important” (2).
Markandaya’s prime humanistic concern is to preserve the native good
values. Though she is influenced by the western culture still she believes that
one must preserve one’s values.. Thus, Markandaya in the climax of the novel
proves that moral values finally call forth the best in Ravi’s mind though
temporarily he turns towards other dehumanizing traits but he chooses the
values he inherited. The crisis of conscience and values is related to the
question of human survival but the novelist seems to be in favour of preserving
one’s values and what is good for the whole community. Bhabani Bhattacharya in
his novel So Many Hungers in fig
gathering episode too shows reserve of compassion inherent in human soul when
the character in the novel Onu shares half of his figs. Markandaya too proves
that the poor people preserve the sense of moral values even in the face of
hunger whereas hunger dehumanizes the rich who exploit the poor. That is why
Ravi prefers to starve saying “I don’t feel in the mood today’ (237) rather
than to submit to an ignoble ignominious way of life. The depiction of the
crisis of values and conscience shows Markandaya’s sympathy for those who are
poor and suffer but still who preserve moral decency and responsibility.
The novel is circular in structure. It begins with Ravi’s
quest for food and shelter and ends with his struggle for a handful of rice.
The novel starts and ends with violence but violence is defeated in both the
cases initially by the world outside Ravi and later by his own moral sense. He
could have joined Damodar to improve his economic conditions by going against
his values but every time he is defeated by his conscience. A realistic picture
of hundreds of hungry poor youth is portrayed by the novelist who faces such
dilemmas in the post independent India struggling to get economic stability.
The novel is the journey of the character Ravi towards understanding of his own
self. In the beginning he was not sure where he stands but later he moves from
irresponsibility to responsibility proving that each individual has a large
capacity for personal growth.
In the climax of the novel, Markandaya takes her
protagonist to the highest point. It is at this time he has to choose between
his conscience or the immorality proving that the poor people can suffer but
still at the moment of trial preserve their values. This proves novelist’s
faith that the have nots are the real haves. The richness of their human spirit
truly dazzles us and her real aim in the novel is to value morality more than
money, values than individualism, society than self.
Works Cited
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Originality and Imitation: Indianess in the Novels of Markandaya. Rawat Pub., 2000.
Anand, T.S. Humanism in Indian English Fiction. Creative
Books. Pub., 2005.
Bande, Usha. Kamala Markandaya: Sahitya Akademi,
2011.
Bhatnagar, Anil Kumar. Kamala Markandaya: A Thematic
Study. Sarup & Sons, 2010.
Davies, Tony. Humanism. 2nd Ed.
Routledge, 1997.
Herrick, Jim. Humanism: An
Introduction. Prometheus
Books Pub., 2005.
Jain, Jasbir. The Novels of Kamala Markandaya: Indian
Literature. 18, No.2, 1975.
Joseph, Margaret P. Kamala Markandaya. Published
by Gulab Vazirani for Arnold Heinemann Pub., 1980.
Kurtz Paul, Humanist Manifesto 2000,
Prometheus Books, 2000.
Markandaya, Kamala. A Handful of Rice. Orient
Paper Backs, 1985.