The Pregnant King

The Mabbharata speaks of Yuvanashva, a childless king who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant, and gives birth to a son. The pregnant king, mythologist Devdutt Pattanik's first work of fiction, weave the tale of the ensuning crisis with the stories of Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife: Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being temporarily castrated by a nymph; Ileshwara, a god on full-moom days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and others who wonder what their dharma is when they exist not here, not there, but somewhere in between.