Author: Devdutta Patnaik
Genre: mythology
I had often watched many of Devdutta
Patnaik’s shows and liked them and so wanted to try reading his books as well. This
one is themed around sexual and gender ambiguities. Mythological stories are in
general replete with examples where god and humans have changed genders as well
as same sex relationships. However, they are for most part covered up. The
author aims to bring out some of these stories and show that maybe the ancient
culture was much more tolerant to these ambiguities than we are today.
Though the title and the theme of
the book seemed promising, I did not quite enjoy reading it. The book starts by
giving an introduction of the theme but I felt that a lot of the points that
the author was trying to make in the start were not exactly accomplished. The
stories, by themselves are interesting though not written in a very interesting
way. After every story, the author has made certain comments. I did not understand
the relevance of these comments very much as they seem to be reiterating the
same point. I also did not understand the overall structure of the book. Were
all the stories based on a point that the author wished to make? If yes, then
the point seemed unclear to me.
After this read, I think I am
going to stick to watching his shows. The book definitely has a collection of
interesting mythological stories but the good part ends there.
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