It’s around 11 o’clock in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh on a recent day. The day is still gray. Kasipatnam Rama Rao is reclining in a chair, at his youngest son’s home in Viashkha colony. At 93, he feels life acutely, a metronomic click of moments, minutes, and hours, thoughts lost and regained. But he always felt life acutely. His stories, especially of rural life and particularly of Dalits, don’t prompt us to think about the glory of literature or of creativity or the grand scheme