A book on curses and boons in Hindu epics and Puranic lore

Deepak M.R.'s book has 32 chapters on curses and 24 on boons. Each chapter is short, the narration simple, but contains nuggets at the end of the chapters.

- ABHINAV AGARWAL

Curses and boons are an integral part of Hindu epics and Puranic lore. A curse led Sage Valmiki to compose the first shloka and then the Ramayana. A curse caused King Janamejaya's sarpa satra (snake sacrifice) to stall and thus lead to the first ever public recital of the Mahabharata. A boon led to King Dashratha becoming father to Lord Rama and the other princes, Lakshmana, Bharat, and Shatrughna. A boon led to the births of the Pandavas. Deepak M.R.'s book is a delightful compendium of these and more fascinating curses and boons from the corpus of Itihasa and Puranic literature.

As a co-author of the anthology, "Unsung Valour", and then a full-length novel, "Abhimanyu: The Warrior Prince", both published by Bloomsbury in 2020 and 2021, respectively, Deepak has long had a deep interest in the epics. This has been mated with a strong belief in staying faithful to the source material, which is a contrast to some prominent authors who seek to "interpret" or create their own epic and succeed only in desecrating revered texts for their warped ideological and pecuniary ends.