Book Review – Seven Secrets of Shiva

This is a long overdue review for BlogAdda’s Book Review program.  BlogAdda, I am really sorry for the delay in posting this review – I would fully understand being on a black list because I have gone over the 7 day requirement several times over.

That said – I have read the book cover to cover and made sure this is a review I can stake my reputation (or what little there now exists of it!) on.

Devdutt Patnaik is a favourite in this household – his books for kids with mythological story lines are awesome.  We own Saraswati’s Secret River and Shiva Plays Dumb Charades.  The mix of contemporary with mythology is a big hit with the kids – imagine the plight of a school principal Mrs. Sivakami who finds Saraswati searching for a lost river in her school!  So when this book review opportunity came up, I grabbed a copy of Seven Secrets of Shiva with sticky fingers.

This seems to be the root book for all the stories, the source material for all his kids’ books, among others. The book is divided into seven chapters from Lingeshwara to Nataraja.  Each chapter is a description of the mythological stories that are attributed to each particular avatar of Shiva, using ‘avatar’ loosely.  Patnaik also gives us his thoughts on interpretation, context and then some general gyan on Hinduism and how this all fits together.  I won’t describe each chapter because that is not what a critique is about.

All the stories of Shiva that we’ve heard are summarized nicely here.  It felt like this book was written to introduce a foreign/westernized Indian audience to Shiva.  There is a lot of reverse fitting of fact and context to explain our ‘pagan’ culture.  Much as it is evident that Dr. Patnaik knows his Shiva facts backwards and forwards and can address it very well to a less knowledgeable audience, it did feel like there’s a lot of explanation and fitting of facts to make the Gods more palatable.

The reason for people worshiping the lingam is one such example.  Patnaik talks of how the phallus is an indication of an internally awakened sanyasi. It is clear that we feel an explanation is in order for worshiping genital parts.  That said, it is what it is.  Trying to make it more palatable/explained and elaborated in a more favourable light seems to just pander to an audience for the sake of it.  Hey, we are pagan in some ways.  Nature worshiping a pantheon of gods.  Whether we like to admit it or not.  I don’t see any reason to reverse fit this to someone who needs it whitewashed.

There are parts of this book that my feminist soul cringed at – what our culture has made as a woman’s place and how the author seems to justify this under the pretext of contextualizing it.  He writes well and would make a very good case to someone bought into everything Hindu culture, rituals and thinking already.  To some of us trying to work within Hinduism’s pretty flexible framework but with our own ideas/modifications to fit other ideals, this book codifies a lot of what is unacceptable idealistically and otherwise with the routine practice of the religion.

Another book review is set to follow – this one of a book I chose and absolutely love on the mind of boys.

Have a wonderful week, people!

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