Old Women

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The two stories in this collection are touching, poignant tales which have as protagonists old women. In Statue, Dulali, a widow since childhood, is now an old woman preoccupied only with day-to-day survival. When the government decides to erect in her village a statue of Dindayal who had fought in India s struggle for independence from British rule and whose love for the young Dulali had led to her ostracization the tragic, forbidden love comes back to haunt her. In The Fairy Tale of Mohanpur, a combination of poverty, societal indifference and government apathy leads Andi to lose her eyesight, even as she persists in her faith in a fairy-tale solution. Alongside these two women are two men, Nabin and Gobindo, who try to fight for them and against the social injustices they suffer.

Mahasweta Devi is at her most tender in her sensitive, delicately drawn portraits of these two old women, although her trenchant pen is as ruthless as ever in delineating the socioeconomic oppression within which they are forced to survive. Extremely readable as moving stories for the fiction lover, they also yield layers of deeper significance and throw light on the plight of women in contemporary India."

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Mahasweta Devi is a writer and social activist. She is the author of numerous plays, essays, novels, and short stories, including Bait and Queen of Jhansi, also published by Seagull Books.