Old Women

Old Women tells the touching, poignant tales of two timeworn women. In ‘Statue’, we meet Dulali, a widow since childhood, who 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—a man who had fought in India’s struggle for independence from British rule and who also was in love with Dulali long ago—a tragic, forbidden love comes back to haunt her. And 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.

Read Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's tribute to Mahasweta Devi in the Indian Express.

‘Her stories of the subaltern will live forever as long as there’s oppression in the world and the poorest of the poor need a voice. In today’s atmosphere of growing intolerance, it’s imperative to read her work and remind ourselves of her lifelong fight for those who are sought to be silenced.’—The Hindu