Devdutt Pattanaik’s new book could be an excellent resource for sex education, not only for young people but also—and especially—for those defenders of Hinduism who are outraged by the notion of every form of intimacy other than heterosexual intercourse in the missionary position for the purpose of procreation.

In Shikhandi And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You, India’s best-loved English-language mythologist exhumes stories from the epics, scriptures, folklore and apocryphal sources to reveal the unabashedly candid sexual proclivities of the ancients. From same-sex desire to gender-bending behaviour to cross-dressing to bestiality, the range of activities these texts describe is exhaustive.

Rather than confining himself to the subcontinent, Pattanaik traces the genealogy of these practices to other cultures and eras as well. In the first section, he chronicles social attitudes to alternative sexuality from the time of the Vikings to the Egyptian pharaohs to Confucian China, concluding that “discomfort with sexual conduct" can be “traced to the valorization of celibacy and the rise of monastic orders in all cultures", among other reasons.

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An illustration from the book

In the second half, Pattanaik introduces 30 indigenous tales that push the limits of conventional sexual imagination. He does not, however, stop merely at the telling of these vignettes, but goes on to add a set of observations at the end of each of them in order to make the reader aware of the multiple layers of meaning and mysteries inherent in them.

As a result, even familiar narratives, such as the story of Shikhandi, come alive with a fresh complexity. After describing this incident of biological mutation—from female to male (that too, by borrowing someone else’s genitalia)—Pattanaik raises questions about inheritance, conflicts, and feelings that commentators tend to gloss over. “What about Shikhandi’s relationship with his wife?" he asks. “How does it feel to know that your husband was a woman on the wedding night and then is a man in the following nights, sporting someone else’s genitalia?"

In spite of the light touch, Pattanaik’s erudition is apparent in his knowledge of little-known facts, such as Bhisma castrating himself to ensure foolproof celibacy (in the Jain Mahabharat) or the origin of “the hijra’s clap". He mentions an episode from the Skanda Purana dealing with the passionate attachment between two women of different castes that led to the establishment of the “Shudri-Brahmani-tirtha". There are several stories of Arjun, the third Pandav, and Krishna, the blue god, assuming the guise of women, and enjoying their sexually ambivalent adventures.

“The soul," a key focus in Hindu thought, “has no gender", writes Pattanaik. Every follower of Hinduism should cherish such a sentiment.

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