To earn his living, Maguni desperately hopes for passengers to choose his old bullock cart over a bus.

A gnarled sahada tree in a family's courtyard bears witness to a series of deaths.

A young woman sold into prostitution faces the hypocrisies of a patriarchal world.

An India almost unknown to us floods the pages of this significant series of short stories sourced from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

Ringing with the music of India's regional languages, and peppered with wit and social commentary, these stories are windows to the past and its people-the everyday struggles and joys; the ties of friendship and faith; the politics of love and rejection; the intricacies of betrayal and envy; and the conflicts of class and caste-while continuing to be relevant to our present, puncturing the boundaries of time and space.

How much has Indian society changed?

How much of it has not?