myth=mithya - Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik

It was at Chennai Airport, while I was waiting for a flight back to Pune that I entered the airport bookstore. Weirdly, after all this time I am somehow naive enough (or stupid enough) to believe that I will just look around and not buy anything from a bookstore because of the big stack of pending books. Yes, I see you pointing a finger at me and laughing your head off, but that was my intention. For real! So as you must have already gathered, I bought this book and stowed it away for a not so distant future.

I had heard of this book earlier but never given it a serious thought. But a recent argument about the Hindu religious philosophy with a colleague and the pending Basham's "The Wonder that was India" drew me to the book. I flipped through randomly and saw a lot of small sections of stories, a page at most, and many crudely drawn sketches of the various Hindu deities. I was to find out later that the book was full of such drawings, tables and flowcharts. I found the pedantic efforts of Dr. Pattanaik extremely cute. The work did not seem half baked and incomplete. The research was well done. At no point of the book did it seem that the author was fleeting through the topics, despite the concise nature of the work. Also, the work is not theistic in nature like religious texts tend to get. Pattanaik does not impose his opinions anywhere. Rather he states in the preface that religion is a matter of faith and can be rationalised only till a point. He recommends seeing it as a way of understanding human life rather than an explanation for it.

The book revolves around the three primary Gods of the Hindu mythology (Bramha, Vishnu, Shiva) and their counterparts (Saraswati, Laxmi, Shakti). It seeks to explain the Hindu religious beliefs in the light of modern concerns. Dr. Pattanaik comes up with an extremely persuasive way to present what we currently know as Hinduism. Scattered throughout the books are the various small stories from the Puranas and Vedas describing the conflict between the devas and asuras. The author brings this strife to a new light by deeming every section of the mythological league as essential in the Hindu culture. The asuras are as important as the devas. He interprets the Hindu culture as non-judgmental, saying there is room for every type of culture, but each has its place and time.

The read was an interesting one, to say the least. There were aspects of the Hindu culture that I was unaware of (at least the aspects as Devdutt Pattanaik sees them). There were also many stories that I did not know of, and many lesser deities that I knew no more than the name of. I am very impressed by Dr. Pattanaik, though I doubt I would reach out for another such work of his any time soon.