Maguni's Bullock Cart and Other Classic Odia Stories

To earn his living Maguni desperately hopes for passengers to choose his old bullock cart over a bus.A gnarled sahada tree in a family's courtyard bears witness to a series of deaths.A young woman sold into prostitution faces the hypocrisies of a patriarchal world.An India almost unknown to us floods the pages of this significant series of short stories sourced from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.Ringing with the music of India's regional languages and peppered with wit and social commentary these stories are windows to the past and its people-the everyday struggles and joys; the ties of friendship and faith; the politics of love and rejection; the intricacies of betrayal and envy; and the conflicts of class and caste-while continuing to be relevant to our present puncturing the boundaries of time and space.How much has Indian society changed?How much of it has not?