eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 58

57

STORIES

HATRED
    SAROJINI SAHOO                                     

Sarojini Sahoo is a distinguished
bilingual South Asian feminist writer,
an associate editor of a feature oriented English journal Indian AGE,
and a regular columnist in The New
Indian Express; she has been conferred
with the Orissa Sahitya Academy
Award, 1993, the Jhankar Award,
1992, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair
Award and the Prajatantra Award.
Kindle magazine in Kolkata has
enlisted her among 25 exceptional
women of India. She is also on the
advisory board of the Indian Journal
of Post-Colonial Literature, published from the English Department
of Newman College, Thodupuzah,
Kerala. Among her previously published work in English are two
anthologies of short stories, a novel,
and a collection of essays. In Odia,
ten novels and ten short stories collections have been published so far to
her credit. Many of her novels, short
stories collection have been translated
into Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali and
have been published from both India
and Bangladesh.
The original story is included in
author’s Odia anthology DUKHA
APRAMIT (ISBN: 81-7411-483-1)
under the title ‘CHHI’ and is translated by Arita Bhowmik and Dinesh
Kumar Mali in Bengali and Hindi
respectively with same title and have
been included in the author’s short
story collection Dukha Aparimit
(ISBN 978 984 404 243-8), published from Bangladesh by Anupam
Prakashani, Dhaka and Rape Tatha
Anya Kahaniyan published by Rajpal
& Sons, Delhi.

eFiction India | June 2014

Part I

N

O ONE HAD the capability to put her curly hair under
control. Her hair was swinging
like flowers over the eyes, ears and nose.
When Granny came home, she used to get
castor oil along with other tidbits. She sat
on the rope stool and put the sticky castor
oil and combed her hair with the comb
made from a horn. She felt she would die
from pain. But Granny would pat her back
and repeat the saying, “castor oil sets the fur
of the sheep well.” She had seen one or two
sheep amidst the herd of goats in Muslim’s
lane. They were not like the sheep found
in Australia or in the Himalayas; they were
the sheep from the coastal regions of Orissa.
The one-and-a-half-inch knotted fur looked
real ugly on the dirty yellowish c