The Pregnant KingDevdutt PattanaikPenguin, Rs 295As a performer who brings to life the rich pageant of Indian myths and legends, Devdutt Pattanaik is that most beguiling of persons, a storyteller who knows how to keep his audience in a state of suspense.In his lecture-demonstrations, he works like a priest-magician. With additional support from dancers and musicians, he might start by drawing the two eyes of the Goddess with a Magic Marker on a white board, placed centre stage. As he speaks, the Goddess grows before our eyes and becomes both the benign image and the terrifying one until in a final gesture Pattanaik erases the fiction that he has created. After such a performance, there is an electrifying moment when waves of applause wash over the white-dhoti-orange-kurta-clad figure of Pattanaik. It’s difficult to believe that he is a doctor by training, a highly successful marketing consultant through need, a writer in his spare time and as he has described in his first work of fiction — a mythologist by passion. All these aspects are apparent in The Pregnant King, though most importantly, it is the last quality that predominates. The marketing man tells us of his audacious re-telling of the episodes from the Mahabharata that have attracted his attention: “They have been churned out of my imagination as I have tried to weave a tapestry of tales that at the very least delights.” The medical man gives a highly credible account of Yuvanashva, the Pregnant King of the title, the virile ruler of a mythical kingdom who suddenly finds that he is with child. The changes that his body undergoes and his mind must accept as he experiences the process of being both father and mother are at the heart of the matter.The consultant refines the ontological questions that are posed through the text, as Pattanaik the mythologist uses our familiarity with the Mahabharata to explore issues about gender. What makes a man male, is it his virility or manhood as it is often named here? Is it the head or the body that makes the choice, as in the famous conundrum posed by Vikram and the Vetal and later transformed into a story by Thomas Mann and made into a famous play, Hayavadana, by Girish Karnad? In the 1960s, Conundrum was the name given to his true-life story by travel writer James Morris, when he decided to have a sex change and become Jan Morris. Issues of transgender mutilation are also described here. The weakest part of the story is the punishment dealt by Yuvanashva, as the supreme ruler, to a pair of young boys who pretend to be a couple and are made to suffer a hideous dual fate on account of it, maybe a comment on how same-sex unions have never had a social sanction. Pattanaik is also an entertainer. He tends to reduce the story to the level of an Amar Chitra Katha tale for adults. Since he gives equal weight to all issues, which may be the way of the itinerant storyteller, there is none of the seriousness of purpose that an Irawati Karve brings in her version of Yuganta or the sense of transformation that she is able to effect in the reader. Pattanaik allows his story to remain in the world of fantastical fiction. Though we should not complain too much that women tend to be described as fields waiting to be ploughed and men will wave their willies around, finally all the ridiculous rituals and indeed barbaric social customs that extol the so called “Arya” way of life have the allure of a B-grade movie. There is an interesting theme waiting to get out of The Pregnant King but its too heavily loaded by the weight of its own mythology.
