Neelkantha Bhairavi: The Pregnant King

Human beings perceive the world in deuce of binary paradoxes –good/bad, white/black, man/woman and so on. These binary components, especially in gender, are deemed natural but anything that strands on the loose lines are deemed unnatural and is dexterously obliterated. It is common to either deny the existence of such unnaturalness, but they appear repeatedly in different myths and stories. There are instances mentioned of men who became women, women who transformed to men, two men creating children without women, two women creating children without men, and of beings who are neither this nor that, but a bit of both suggesting long recognition with queer notions and attitudes. Queerness could be understood necessarily through different cultural

And like Bhairavi, his existence terrifies them with the infinite possibilities of the world. Yuvanashva was finally able to come into terms with his condition. He was the father to Jayanta, the son whom he created outside his body, also he was the mother of Mandhata, the son whom he carried within his body. He strived his entire life to fit into a particular identity, more clearly, a particular gender, never understanding that the world is never as we perceive it to be. Conclusion The Pregnant King takes its readers through a journey of realism and contemporary ideologies that haunts the mankind, not just in the present, when the world tend to forget that these ‘unnatural’ existences, as they tag them existed even in the times of Gods. Such instances have been tolerated only in meagre regions in historic tales, and the queer plots and subplots portray a kind of repression of choices that reflects the differences in nature and culture. Beyond the sexual politics, time-honoured metaphysical metaphors and allegories, the tales retain a mythical yet relevant notion that though they are socially inappropriate, nothing is