The birth and development of a short story in Odia literature is a recent phenomenon. We can see and see some great stories in the development of Odia literature. Odia is one of the oldest languages and also has many folk and prose works in its unique style of writing.
Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-19 18)
- The credit for the development of the short story is with the Fakir Mohan Senapati (1843-19 18), who wrote some of the most outstanding works and has developed the original concept for some of the finest works.
- Fakir Mohan Senapati is known as the father of Odedia novels and short stories.
- In the year 1898, Fakir Mohan Senapati wrote and published ‘Rebati’, which is also popular as the first short story and is a big hit among the public.
- This dialect is written in Odiya languages, and it is a short story about the love between Rebati and school teacher.
- In this short story, there is sadness along with the beauty of love and all these readers will face it while reading this short story.
Patriotism and social improvement:
- In the first quarter of the twentieth century, we find significant developments in writing such as the desire to display patriotism as well as show social improvement from society.
- The second issue to demonstrate patriotism about the development of more and more literature in the Odiya languages so that the rich heritage of this great language has been shown and remembered.
- Most writers of this time of the first quarter of the twentieth century have English educated people and they want to develop society and want to give high light to the number of social evils prevailing in this society.
- Most of these authors mainly display such topics in their articles present in this era, so that the presence of social marriage, such as child marriage, caste system, dowry, landlord system should be properly highlighted.
- Its main purpose is to show that people should be equally aware of it and gradually these castes should be completely eliminated from the society in the name of social evils.
- In the next quarter of the twentieth century and before independence, the rise of the prevailing freedom movement and Marxism is influenced by some of the finest authors and they produce some excellent works
Reflection of Marxism on Odia Literature:
- During this time, many writers inspired by Marxism have demonstrated the exploitation of farmers and labourers by the landlords.
- Bhagwati Charan Panagrahis Shikar (The Hunt) is an example of a short story.
- Poor tribals eventually cut off the headlines of their landlords and reached the police station along with them.
- In this story, the evils of the landlords have been exposed and the Marxist theory of the poor who attacked some rich and then the simplicity of that farmer has been shown because they admitted that he had killed the landlord.
The post-independence Odia short story:
- In the post-independence era of the twentieth century, in the era of independence, we see the superiority of some excellent writers’ development and some of them are capable of winning the later prestigious Gyanpith Award.
- It is notable that there are some names in this era, Gopinath Mohanty (1914-93), Surendra Mohanty (1920-92), Nityananda Mahapatra (B.D. 1912), Rajakiyor Roy (1914) and Raj Kishore Patnaik (1996-97).
- Gopinath Mohanty (1914-9) wrote several novels of excellent excellence and then published several excellent short stories, which he published as the most outstanding author.
- He won the prestigious literary award of the Bharat Jnanpith Award for his novels.
- His stories are very poems in short stories, and most of his writings are deeply in the thoughts process of the tribals especially of the tribals and display some outstanding stories in small articles.
- Some of his articles are influenced by the presence of Buddhist India and most of his writings come in the thinking processes of the character.
- His characters are mostly psychological institutions that present some great and wonderful short stories.
- They go to show the decrease in human values due to corruption, lack of employment
Tremendous development of short story literature during post-independence:
- These authors have presented a powerful background and make outstanding storytelling to the people of Orissa literature.
- In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the short story development became absolutely tremendous.
- Mohapatra Neelmani Sahu lives in the traditions of Fakir Mohan Senapati, but he also performed some excellent humorous works with modernity and made him famous and great.
- In the short stories written by Kishori Charan Das, we see the very presence of high middle-class life and find many interesting comments in those stories.
- Shantanu Acharya has experimented with the presence of a mixture of social, economic and political conditions in his stories, and thus, his stories present some excellent aspects of life and the readers enjoyed the stories written by him.
- Short stories written by Manoj Das prepare a complete mix of realities with fantasies and thus offer a wonderful presentation of storytelling in people’s mind.
Present day Odia short story writers:
- At present, many writers such as Chandrashekhar Rath, Satkadi Hota, Vibhuti Patnaik, Uma Shankar Mishra, Jagannath Prasad Das, Rabi Patnaik, Anjan Mohanty, Ramchandra Behera, Pratibha Ray, Yashodhara Mishra, Harprasad Das, Jagdish Mohanty, Sarojini Sahu, Dash Benhur, Padmaj Pal, Haruikesh Panda, Paresh Patt writing many short stories.