The tales in Kaanduri and Other Stories are selected from the writings of Dash Benhur. In one, a cynical narrator is shamed into a discovery of goodness in a rickshaw-puller when, in his hurry to catch a bus, it is the latter who urges him to get into the moving vehicle forgoing his payment. An old man writes. several poems about his beloved bicycle; stung by his grandson's contempt, he gets it repaired, makes it look like new and, when his grandson rides it proudly, returns to write a new poem.
A man is rebuked by his ailing wife for giving away the last packet of biscuits to a beggar during a journey, but his acts of goodness are found to be rooted in a painful childhood memory of watching his infant sister die of starvation. A firebrand journalist who rails against corruption among the rich and powerful succumbs to the temptation of appropriating an imported blanket from a consignment meant for cyclone relief. Small surprises and poignant discoveries about relationships account for the appeal of these stories, occasionally marked by humour, which convey the flavour of life among generally the middle and lower classes of Odisha. They have been deftly translated from the Odia by Bikram K. Das.
DASH BENHUR (whose real name is Jitendra Narayan Dash), born in 1953 in Khandapara, a retired Reader in Political Science, is a popular and prolific writer of short stories in Odia. He has been selected for the Bal Sahitya Puraskar, 2014, by the Sahitya Akademi for his contribution to children's literature, of which he is considered Odisha's leading exponent. He started publishing stories for adults as well as children while he was in college, when he adopted his pen-name, inspired by a famous Hollywood film. His rural upbringing moulds his characters who seem caught between memory and desire, village and the city, cynicism and idealism.
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