Mahasweta Devi: Short Stories Lesson Plan

What is the literary device used by the narrator in the passage, “...hundreds of rape-murder-lockup torture, etc. non-issues which by natural law approached but failed to reach highlighting in the newspapers–all this remained non-issues. Much more important than this was choli ke pichhe–behind the bodice”? What effect or effects are achieved by the use of this device?

This question invites students to identify and explore the device of irony, specifically verbal irony (in which the meaning is different from the words used). They may note that the narrator is commenting on the backwardness in priorites of the national interest, and the things that are given status as “...