I believe in God, I believe that someone is watching over us, guiding us, taking care of us. I believe in Karma, I believe in most of the life lessons taught in Hindu religious books. How one interprets them is one’s individual choice, but they make you believe in divine. That is why mythology is my favorite genre to read. Here are my current favorite Indian mythology books:
Palace of Illusions
Palace of illusions is a book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This is a retelling of epic tale of Mahabharata from Draupadi’s point of view. When the book was released, it became immensely popular especially among the females because up until this point we have heard The Mahabharata from the male point of view but it was so refreshing to read the same stories but from Draupadi’s perspective who is said to be the reason behind the great war.
Ram Chandra series
This is another beautiful book series written by Amish Tripathi with stories inspired from Ramayana. Each of the book follows the life events of Ram, Sita and Raavan – the 3 main characters of Ramayana – till one common concluding event which is the abduction of Sita. The last book of the series: War of Lanka is also available to read now which follows the story after the abduction.
The pregnant king
We all know the stories of Ram, Krishna, Shiva, Kurus, Pandavas, etc. and their parts in the epic Ramayana and Mahabharata but there are so many other beautiful stories which took place side by side in these epics and most of us are not aware about those.
One such story is of Yuvanashva – The pregnant king who because of his one wrong step defied the order of nature and gave birth to a child. This is a brilliant book by Devdutt Patnaik which everyone should read.
The fisher queen’s dynasty
This is a book by Kavita Kane telling us the story about one simple woman named – Satyawati who was not happy with how her life was turning out to be so she turned her life around by courageously defying the rules laid out by patriarchal world and made her own destiny. The character so powerful that eventually led to Kurukshetra war.
The forest of enchantments
Similar to the theme of The Palace of Illusions, this book by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is from the perspective of Sita. Stories are not only shown from Sita’s viewpoint but all other female characters like Suparnakha, Urmila, Kailkeyi, etc are also shown as the strong female individuals with their own opinions.
