Urmila And Parvati Combo Set 2 Books By Samar (Paperback)

1. Urmila : The Forgotten Solitude

Few literary traditions illustrate this more clearly than the Ramayana. Generations have reflected on Rama’s duty, Sita’s endurance, and Lakshmana’s devotion. Yet one question lingers quietly in the background: what happens to the person who is left behind while others become legends?

Samar’s Urmila is built around that question. Rather than retelling the Ramayana through battles, divine interventions, or royal intrigue, the novel turns its attention toward absence itself. It asks readers to inhabit the emotional landscape of Urmila, Lakshmana’s wife, whose fourteen years of separation become not merely a narrative detail but an entire human existence worthy of examination.

What surprised me most was not that Urmila suffers. Mythological retellings often rely on suffering as a shortcut to sympathy. Samar chooses a more demanding route. He is interested in how a person continues living when life refuses to follow the script they imagined for themselves. The novel follows Urmila from her childhood in Mithila through marriage, separation, motherhood, ageing, and eventually her role as a matriarch. In doing so, it transforms a marginal figure into the emotional centre of an epic world.

2. Parvati : She who became Shakti By Samar

We are all too familiar with Sati's story, and Parvati's irreplaceable place in our culture hardly requires any introduction. So why did I write Parvati? Although the reason is explored in the foreword in depth, I chose to write this book to unravel both the known and hidden dimensions of Parvati's story, of her life. The story opens with Parvati’s birth. Who first revealed that she was Sati reborn? What went through her mother’s mind when Shiva sought Parvati's hand in marriage? And what battle did Parvati herself fight, and why? Unfolding beyond these questions, the novel brings to life a little-known Puranic tale of Ganesha’s birth, the legend of Kartikeya, the fierce awakening of Kali, and above all, the timeless dialogues between Shiva and Parvati.