The Village and the City: Spatial Dichotomies in Kamala Markandaya's Fiction

Abstract This paper examines the spatial dichotomy between the village and the city in Kamala Markandaya’s fiction as a central framework for understanding the socio-cultural, economic, and psychological tensions in postcolonial India. Through close readings of Nectar in a Sieve, A Handful of Rice, and The Coffer Dams, the study investigates how the contrasting geographies of rural and urban life serve as metaphors for broader binaries tradition and modernity, collectivism and individualism, harmony and alienation. Markandaya’s village is portrayed not merely as a pastoral ideal but as a space marked by endurance, poverty, and vulnerability to external forces such as industrialization and colonial capitalism. In contrast, the city emerges as a site of aspiration, disillusionment, and fragmentation, where characters grapple with survival, displacement, and loss of identity. The paper argues that Markandaya does not present these spaces as fixed or monolithic; rather, she uses them to reveal the transitional nature of postcolonial subjectivity. Drawing on postcolonial theory and spatial studies, the analysis emphasizes how these spatial tensions reflect the human cost of development and modernization. The liminal or hybrid spaces, particularly evident in The Coffer Dams, challenge binary thinking and offer a nuanced view of cultural negotiation and identity formation. In doing so, Markandaya’s spatial imagination critiques linear progress and affirms the complexity of lived experience in a rapidly changing India.