Published Paper Details:

Sexual identities like cross dressing, homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderness, hermaphroditism, and more have always been mysteries in any society at any point in time, but mythology acts as a lens through which one can get to the bottom of these mysteries. Mythology always presents a picture of ancient times, and we get to know the society through tales from various sources like the Puranas, Vedas, Jainism, Buddhism, Mahabharat, Ramayana, and oral traditions of Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Vraj, etc. All these sources throw light on the existence of queerness in India, and they also validate how acceptable and normal it was during those ancient eras. This research paper is an attempt to enunciate how retellings of stories by Devdutt Pattanaik in Shikhandi: And Other Queer Tales They Don't Tell You (2014) can be more thought provoking and how they refresh one's ideals on such queer relations. Every tale in the novella suggests that this kind of transition not only existed with mortals, but that even gods, goddesses, devas, asuras, angels, demons, and more were the forerunners of queer relations. These stories present great noble causes behind every transformation, and this proves the valuable position of queerness in ancient India.