Jayanti Naik says in the preface to the book: ‘This English translation will of- fer a glimpse into the true nature of Goan
society … different from the prevailing ste- reotyped and touristic images of Goa.’ The eleven stories in the collection are about ‘the salt of the earth’, that is, good and decent people who inhabit the villages in and around Quepem in South Goa. These people mainly belong to the ‘Bahujan Samaj’, as people of non-elite castes describe themselves. The 55- year old author and folklorist Jayanti Naik knows them well and her stories celebrate their myths, superstitions and folklore. Al- though the day-to-day lives of her charac- ters may be mundane what impressed me were the psychological insights extracted from them with her narrative skills.
Furthermore, what renders these stories enjoyable is the spice of pepper their trans- lator Augusto Pinto, 56, sprinkles on the plot and action through his impressive language skills,as he empathizes with the milieu of the stories (first published in Devanagari Konkani), and then, as with a translator’s ear finely attuned to the village and its rus- tic customs, converts them into an English that flows naturally and rhythmically. The reader gets a bonus in the form of an afterword, an essay in criticism from the translator that is like a delicious dessert after the main course.