(The protagonist’s) guts and sinews are too strong, his response to Ambedkar’s call to Dalits to “Educate, Unite, Agitate” too complete and all – consuming to allow him to leave in the past. His story lives in the present. It is about his pride in his work, about stretching himself to the utmost to achieve perfection in everything he does, about the despair of not finding work, but also about his determination to forge for his children a destiny that was never “ordained”.

Shanta Gokhale in
The Hindu,
(November 2, 2003)