Queer Sensibility in Devdutt Pattanaik's The Pregnant King

Abstract

The present thesis entitled queer sensibility in Devdutt Pattanaik’s ‘The Pregnant King’ presents the story of Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks the magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant. It is set in the backdrop of the Mahabharata and makes references to characters and incidents in the Kurukshetra. The irony of the whole story is that the king who is supposed to be the epitome of manhood and upholder of Dharma longs till his last breath to be called ‘mother’ just once by Mandhata (The child who is conceived in and delivered from his body). The conflict between desire and social obligation/destiny is a major theme in the book. It also speaks about questions around the idea of gender. We have normally seen that women are fertile and they are meant to be pregnant and carry the babies but here we see completely a different thing which led us to think that is it possible? Can this happen in real world? Is mythical world making us fool by presenting such story? Here it is shown that a male king becomes pregnant by drinking magic potion and he carries the baby in his inner thigh and gives birth to a baby boy by some surgical operation and feed the milk too. A complete male body is doing all that which is impossible to think or even imagine in reality so I want to find out why our mythical world is so different how could it be possible? What were the gender roles of that time? Can really a male be pregnant? I want to solve these queries in my research paper? And I will be applying queer theory for interpreting the text. What happens if one desires to experience life regardless of his gender? Should a capable woman be denied the throne because of her sex? Could society accept a man, who willingly converts himself into a woman? What happen to men, who emotionally feel more like women? How does society respond to such deviations from the normal? Are they accepted, acknowledged or punished?