Book Review – Shikhandi And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You, Devdutt Pattanaik

I was a kid when I first read about Shikhandi. It was the vernacular edition of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, translated by none other than Chakravarti Rajagopalachari - famously known as Rajaji - himself. Remaining fascinated by the adventures of Arjun and Karna, adoring the all-meaning acts of Krishna and reading through the scenes of the battle-field with the childhood curiosity, I paid little or no attention to the role of Shikhandi in the fall of that invincible patriarch of the Kuru clan, Bhishma.
 

As I grew up, the one character that stood alone in my mind was Krishna. With all his boyish charms, romantic adventures, mysterious mysticism, he remained rooted in my mind, along with his one true love, Radha. Yudhishtra, Arjun, Bhishma, Karna and Panchali, they all fell by the wayside. But recently I started coming across books that took to viewing the Mahabharata through the eyes of some of the lead protagonists and, at times, the antagonists. Having read a book that depicted the epic through the eyes of the pivotal Panchali and also having gone through a couple of poetry works that focused on her relationship with her various husbands, I felt a fascination to learn more about the individual characters. Shikhandi was the not even in the nooks of my mind.
 

But, the other day I came across this book in the bookshelves of one of the big retail chains in the city. It was love at first sight for me. The design of the cover itself was so intriguing. Here, Krishna stands holding the reins, controlling four powerful stallions that fiercely strain at the leash. Behind him stands that effeminate Shikhandi, wielding a bow shaped by his (or, is it ‘her’?) vengeance, waiting to fulfill his (or, again, is it ‘her’?) destiny by killing Bhishma. And, behind them all stands Arjun, one of the greatest archers that this land is said to have ever produced. Then there is this unmistakable presence of Hanuman, in the banner of the Pandava chariot.
 

Having heard about Devdutt Pattanaik occasionally and having seen many of his books in the store shelves often, I decided to pick up this book and learn more about the author as well as that crucial little cog in Mahabharata, Shikhandi. Well, it is not a disappointing experience.
 

This book, as it says in the title, is not just about Shikhandi. It deals with those characters, which the modern society labels as LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual & Transgender), that have been existing in this world for eons. The author begins by listing down instances of ‘queer’ sexual behavior and attitudes as noticed in various cultures and epics across the world. He moves across the Time and cultures to pick out examples. From the physical consummation between Leda and Zeus who was in the form of a swan, to a mighty Chinese emperor who cut his robe in order to not disturb his sleeping lover (a man), from the ancient Amazonian female warriors who severed one of their breasts to freely wield the bow, to the Egyptian male gods who forcibly raped their fellow junior gods, he plucks out instances from across the firmament of Time. 
 

But the book mainly focuses on the characters from the Hindu mythology and Indian history of yore. Starting with Shikhandi, this book goes on to recount the tales about male gods who took the forms of women to protect or to destroy, the female gods that assumed fierce and masculine roles to destroy evil, male gods who took the form of midwives to attend to their devotees in times of need, and gods who mated with one another after one of them took the form of a female. As closely as our species are concerned, there are instances of female friends who didn’t want to get separated for the sake of marriage and who decided to live together forever, male friends who underwent a curse with one of them turning into a female and how they overcame the same by marrying between themselves, the great hero Arjun who was cursed to face loss of manliness for an year, and even a poet and a king who developed strong friendship and platonic love for one another without even getting to meet ever.
 

The book picks up such ‘queer’ and ‘unconventional’ behavior from across the width and breadth of our country and points them out to us, without taking sides. Yes. One appreciable aspect that I found about the book is that it doesn’t take sides. It neither takes a moral high ground by denouncing LGBT relationships as immoral, nor does it advocate for such relationships, by quoting them as a result of modernism and evolution. If anything, the book merely states the facts, raises a few vicarious questions from the viewpoint of the LGBT community and leaves the rest to us. We get to read about how such queer things have been happening in the past and how they are repeated now, but nowhere does the book pass any judgment whatsoever. That, I would say, is one of the strong points of this book.
 

Being a person who always felt squeamish to feel or talk about the LGBT trend, I opened this book with a bit of awkwardness clouding my mind, but when I closed it, I learnt that it is possible for anything and everything to exist in this vast Universe of ours. To quote, paraphrased, some sage whose words I came across a long time back, ‘Life is big. It is indeed very big. It is us humans that compartmentalize it and define as to what should be and should not be in it. But life is too big to be captured within definitions and to be found within bounds’.
 

Pick up the book. Worth reading once.

Ashok Krishna