‘Maguni’s Bullock Cart and Other Classic Odia Stories’: A glimpse into Odisha’s literary tradition

Maguni's Bullock Cart and Other Classic Odia Stories is one of the short story anthologies curated by Mini Krishnan for HarperCollins India. Krishnan served as the editor – and conceptualiser – of the collection while Leelawati Mohapatra, KK Mohapatra, and Paul St-Pierre translated the stories in tandem, working under the Odia philosophy of “pitha khaiba na bindha ganiba?”: Would you rather savour the pancake or count the holes in it? In other words, “if the translation resonates with the reader, does it matter whether one or three translators were involved?” After collecting translated short stories “the way other people collect watches or potted plants”, Krishnan decided to edit the stories into a book series of three languages: Kannada, Malayalam, and Odia. Krishnan’s goals are lofty, varying from building “a treasure house of our own pasts” to participating in the need for Indians to keep up with world literature, “a trend that has led to a sudden visibility for translations of Indian literary works”.

A wealth of information and pleasure

The collection hosts 20 stories from various Odia writers, of whom only one – Fakir Mohan Senapati – has the honour of a double feature. The stories offer a wealth of information and pleasure. First and foremost, they...

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