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The Pregnant King

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The Pregnant King

Written by: Devdutt Pattanaik
Narrated by: Suyash Mohan
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About this listen

 ‘I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’ Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story. It is also the story of his mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; of young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; of Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; of Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; of Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and of Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others. Building on Hinduism’s rich and complex mythology—but driven by a very contemporary sensibility—Devdutt Pattanaik creates a lush and fecund work of fiction in which the lines are continually blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Confronted with such fluidity the reader is drawn into Yuvanashva’s struggle to be fair to all—those here, those there and all those in between. Hinduism Philosophy Religious Studies
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loved it , it took some time for the story to build up, buy when it started it was amazing,,,, very interesting, very informative , very logically ..

very interesting

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I loved the way story is crafted. It Has all the Rasa emotions for listeners to enjoy

Beautifully weaved

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I am in love with the whole story...it indeed gave me a new perspective to look at things happening around...omg this story was more thrilling than any other stories I have read or watched

Opened up a new perspective for me

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The narration starts off really robotic, but you get used to it. The story is very captivating, however the end leaves much to be desired. I did not sign up for a spiritual - psychological lesson, and after such a stunning storytelling, the end made me skip and roll my eyes.

The story is brilliant and captivating

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