Mulk Raj Anand’s “Lajwanti and other stories”

The moment Anand name is uttered, an individual gets struck with the novels like Untouchable and Coolie. Even the Wikipedia has listed only his novels and autobiographies. I am quite surprised to see the absence of this collection of short stories. However, after reading this text, I found this collection quite interesting as this cannot be stereotypically labelled unlike other Anand novels which is always studied as those that deals only with the issues of so called ‘untouchables’. The collection deals with various issues of women, division in society based on class and the religion and again of course the Dalit issue is not exempted. A theoretical approach including feminism, Marxism and subaltern studies can be applied to these short stories. Even a semiotic approach to the text is possible as it involves plenty of symbols and imageries. The signifier and the signified of the text require attention to comprehend the real crux of the story. The author’s versatile capacity is evident in this collection though a few has criticised this collection to resemble Hindi teleserials. In short, the collection cannot be merely ignored as a simple text. It has rich sources for knowledgeable discussion and deserves reading.