Renowned Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand was well known for his socialist views. These come to the fore in this tongue-in cheek story about a landowner’s progressive son who returns from overseas with such revolutionary ideas as turning his farm into a villager-owned co-operative and importing a tractor to improve the lives of workers. The focus of the story is the tractor, and the landowner’s ingenious method of overcoming the villagers’ fears and indignation associated with the tractor’s “rape” of their Corn Goddess. Themes: social conscience, change, religious and cultural differences, suspicion, pride.
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