The Pregnant King : by Devdutt Pattanaik

Yuvanashva  was a childless king, who accidentally drank a magic potion meant to make his queen pregnant  and gave birth to a son. The novel is based on his story. It also has stories about Somavat, who surrendered his masculinity to become a wife, about Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, about Arjuna, who was forced to masquerade as a woman, after being cursed by a nymph, about Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on a full-moon night, and about Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, who is worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by some others.

The book plays in the twilight zone between masculinity and femininity and inter-sexuality. In those days and age whether all the knowledge of X and Y Chromosome was known or not, is not clear. But definitely the concepts existed, and the characters in our epics are reflection of an eternal reality, although may be in a little dramatic or exaggerated manner.  Intersexuality as a term was adopted by medicine during the 20th century, and applied to human beings whose biological sex cannot be classified as clearly male or female. Some people (whether physically intersex or not) do not identify themselves as either exclusively female or exclusively male. Androgyny is sometimes used to refer to those without gender-specific physical sexual characteristics or sexual orientation or gender identity, or some combination of these; such people can be physically and psychologically anywhere between the two sexes. Among humans, some men have two Xs and a Y ("XXY",  Klinefelter's syndrome), or one X and two Ys (XYY syndrome), and some women have three Xs or a single X instead of a double X ("X0", Turner syndrome). There are other exceptions in which SRY is damaged (leading to an XY female), or copied to the X (leading to an XX male).

To bring all the above characters together, the author has created some deliberate distortions in the story and also back-dated or front-dated some of the narratives. But it contains lot of wisdom, eternal wisdom retold along with the myth. In the words of the author “ The book is full of hymns, chants, rituals, sells, speculations, philosophies and ancient codes of conduct. These must not be taken as authentic as my intention is not to recreate reality, but to represent the thought process,

“ You have to see a man’s eye through a woman’s body. Then you will see a different truth. A truth that a few men are prepared to acknowledge. Take away dharma and the man is a beast.”

“Was is so terrible to be a woman?”

“No, it is terrible to appear as a woman and still have a man’s heart."

“ Liberating actually. I could get away with anything, I could cry dance and sing as I pleased. I had to answer no woman or man. I was no one’s husband or wife. But still Kama did not leave me in peace.”

“ I loved the little girl and could have made her my wife,but she looked upon me as a teacher, mother, friend, protector and parent. My year as an enunch had made me actually aware of the dark thoughts of men. I refused to marry her, I made her my daughter-in-law.”

“ Krishna then became a woman. A perfect woman, Mohini, the enchantress. She approached him bearing the sixteen love-charms of marriage. …… the axe swang, the head rolled, Mohini wept as a widow should.”

“ And this scar? Do you want to deny the truth of this scar?” Asked Yuvanashva, parting his dhoti, revealing the gash of child-birth on his left inner thigh. “Everybody knows what that is” said Simantini “ A hunting accident, where you were gored by a great boar’s tusks.” Outside the crows cheered. What a brilliant lie! Order has been restored. The family tree was on full bloom. Its honour intact. 

“Even Ila lost control of his senses. When moon waxed and his body turned masculine, he discovered he continued to harbor a woman’s thought. .. and when the moon waned, and his body turned feminine, he could not stop feeling like a man, and he yearned the company of his wives.”

These are some of the paragraphs from the book I have coined to entice you to read the book. It would be a mythological experience of a different kind.