An anthology of some of the best Oriya short stories written over the last hundred years. Some of the stories are formal experiments in storytelling while others are rooted in real life situations and events, and still others portray the lives of ordinary people caught up in the intricacies of living. Village life dominates the stories, not in a reduced and simplified form, but rather in all its complexity, and even cruelty at times, with its relationships traversed by hierarchy, caste, religion and economic and social differences. The transition that Orissa was going through at that time is also reflected in these stories. A collection which, when read as a whole, bears witness to the transformation and continuity of life, values and the specificity of culture of this eastern coastal state.