Mansarovar – 4

Munshi Premchand was the pen name of Hindi and Urdu writer Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava (1880-1936), born to Ajaiblal and Anandi Devi in Lamhi, a village near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. Premchand’s written work includes 14 novels, 250 to 300 short stories, several translations of English classics, and innumerable essays and editorial pieces. He also published and edited two literary journals: Hans (The Swan) and Jagran (Awakening). Many of Premchand’s short stories were collected posthumously in an eight-volume series titled Mansarovar. In Part 4, which contains 20 stories, Premchand writes about such themes as education (in the story Prerna), the caste system in rural India (in Sadgati, Do Kabre, Kuchad and Sava Ser Gehoon), discrimination against women in a patriarchal and caste-based society (Aaga-Picha), and the pretentious civility of the upper classes (Dhaporsankh). Sadgati is a story about Dukhi, who worked as a servant in the house of a pandit (priest). Dukhi is from the Chamar community (now a Scheduled Caste), and so poor than he cannot afford even one meal a day. The pandit and his wife make him work relentlessly, so much so that one day, after Dukhi finishes his tasks, he collapses and dies...