Rough Passage to the Bodhi Tree by Shiv K Kumar

Rough Passage to the Bodhi Tree” is claimed to be an elegant, highly readable retelling of Prince Siddhartha's journey to englightenment. Shiv K Kumar has endeavoured to retell the story in his own style. However, Kumar faces the test of counterparts such as Asura and Shiv Trilogy by his contemporaries.

A brief description goes like this. A prince once gave up everything to attain inner peace, creating the world’s most treasured and well-known coming-of-age story: Siddhartha’s journey to Enlightenment; his transformation from a mere mortal to an enlightened soul. Join Siddhartha, the ‘brooding dove’, as he wins Yashodhara’s hand in marriage, challenges his father-in-law, celebrates with wine and festivities and then, to everyone’s surprise and consternation, renounces it all. Seeking the path of the wise, he lays the noble path for us. This is the story of how an ordinary mortal comes to see the light.


Aged ninety-two, Shiv K. Kumar injects the wisdom of a lifetime of writing into this immortal tale, fashioning the Buddha’s story into, possibly, each of our own.

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