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Stree Sutra: Demi Goddesses of Indian Myth and Folklore
524 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 10, 2026
About the author
Koral Dasgupta
14 books181 followers"Her stories give an insight into the unknown world of creativity and imaginations."
WION
"Her novel works beyond the obvious, characters not just individuals but a philosophy."
INDIA TODAY
Koral is an Indian author, now working on The Sati Series for Pan Macmillan. The Sati series is a five book project on the Pancha Kanyas of Indian mythology.
She is a compulsive storyteller. She writes academic non fictions and relationship dramas, exploring the inherent nature of complex minds that leads to a relatable conflict and unpredictable climax. As on May 2020, Koral has published five books with Westland, Niyogi, Rupa and Pan Macmillan Publishers.
She is the founder of www.TellMeYourStory.biz, a story laboratory led by crowd-sourced narratives.
She consults with educational and corporate bodies on content and communication projects and workshops.
Koral is known for a great sense of humour. But when she is tired or sad or angry, she paints.
Koral is recognised in the list of Innovator25 Asia Pacific 2019 prepared by The Holmes Report, a New York based PR news agency.
WION
"Her novel works beyond the obvious, characters not just individuals but a philosophy."
INDIA TODAY
Koral is an Indian author, now working on The Sati Series for Pan Macmillan. The Sati series is a five book project on the Pancha Kanyas of Indian mythology.
She is a compulsive storyteller. She writes academic non fictions and relationship dramas, exploring the inherent nature of complex minds that leads to a relatable conflict and unpredictable climax. As on May 2020, Koral has published five books with Westland, Niyogi, Rupa and Pan Macmillan Publishers.
She is the founder of www.TellMeYourStory.biz, a story laboratory led by crowd-sourced narratives.
She consults with educational and corporate bodies on content and communication projects and workshops.
Koral is known for a great sense of humour. But when she is tired or sad or angry, she paints.
Koral is recognised in the list of Innovator25 Asia Pacific 2019 prepared by The Holmes Report, a New York based PR news agency.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 23, 2026
While reading 'Stree Sutra' I kept thinking about how many stories we've grown up around without ever really questioning them...We know the names, the rituals, the myths, the little stories our families told us, but we rarely stop to think about the women inside them...This book made me look at those familiar stories a little differently...it felt less like reading an anthology and more like slowly discovering the women who were always there but whose stories were never really told to us in their entirety...the way this book made me think about feminism and patriarchy without making either of them feel like a lecture...it made me question how easily a woman's strength, education can become something to fear when she doesn't fit into the roles society has created for her...so many of these stories made me wonder who decided which women would be worshipped, which ones would be feared and which ones would simply be forgotten.. And I think that's what made the goddess more divine.. Now, as a Bengali..the part about 'Kolabou' felt especially close to my heart... Since childhood, every Durga Puja i have looked at Kolabou & wondered about her..i knew she was part of the ritual.. I saw her every year.. but I never really knew the story behind what I was seeing...after reading this, I know I'll look at her differently from now on...Koral Dasgupta has made me look at Kolabou with a kind of curiosity and respect I wish I had discovered much earlier...& I loved most was how naturally the book speaks about women's power and empowerment...every demi goddess, every folklore and every myth seems to reveal another side of womanhood strength, desire, resilience, freedom and the courage to exist beyond what society expects from women..it made me realise how powerful these stories can be when we finally look at them through a women's eyes...
September 30, 2026
यत्र नार्यस्तु पूज्यन्ते रमन्ते तत्र देवताः ।
यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः ॥
Yatra nāryastu pūjyante ramante tatra devatāḥ
Yatraitāstu na pūjyante sarvāstatrāphalāḥ kriyāḥ
— Manusmriti, Chapter 3, Verse 56
“Where women are honored, the divine energies delight; where they are mistreated, all actions and rituals become fruitless.”
I first heard a recitation of the Garuda Purana back in 2013, and thirteen years later, I found myself hearing it again. Quite coincidentally, I was also reading this book around the same time. Since several of the stories in Stree Sutra draw upon or mention various Puranas, including the Garuda Purana, the timing felt almost serendipitous.
Stree Sutra is a wonderfully curated collection of 22 stories by 22 authors, each exploring the lives and legends of divine and celestial women from Indian lore — Yoginis, Yakshinis, Apsaras, Gandharvis, Nagas, and many more.
Some might find the word mythology more appropriate here, but I personally hesitate to use it. The Vedas and Puranas are deeply intertwined with our history, culture and religion, and I have never been able to experience texts like the Ramayana or Mahabharata simply as fiction. They occupy a space that feels far more complex and intimate than that.
What struck me most about all 22 stories was their sheer feminist energy. I found myself talking about them constantly with my family. More than anything, the book awakened an almost insatiable epistemic curiosity in me — the kind that makes you finish a story and immediately reach for your phone to Google everything you can find about the woman you have just read about.
From Muchilottu Bhagawati’s resistance against patriarchy and Abirami’s boundless compassion, to Bonbibi, the protector of the Sundarbans; from the Yoginis, the secret guardians of the earth, to the fascinating dichotomy of Aashan Bibi, who is referred to as a Muslim Durga; from Amritangi’s spiritual awakening of a sadhu to Hidimbi, the woman extraordinaire; from Rambha and the violation she suffered to Tilottama’s shattering of stereotypes; from Dakini, the embodiment of the divine feminine, to Kola Bou, guardian of cosmic harmony; from Kaikesi’s silenced maternal voice to Devi Kalijai, goddess of the lake; from Revati, cursed and then extolled, to Nilawanti, the anti-villain; from Dhari Devi, Mother Nature, to the complex interplay of selfless love and desireless duty in the stories of Renuka and Matangi; from the unimpeachable Varudhini to Bhadrakali, the first avenger; from Garh Devi, she who rests in the ravine, to Punjikasthala’s transformation into Anjana; and finally, Sulochana, the unhonoured — each story opened yet another door into a world I realised I knew remarkably little about.
My mind simply could not stop feeding on it.
The entire book is steeped in a fierce and compelling feminine energy, and that was one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed reading it. The other was my genuine fascination with the women who never quite found their way into the grand narratives I grew up hearing. We know the central figures of our epics so well, but there are countless women standing at the margins of these stories — women whose own narratives are equally fascinating, complicated and worthy of being remembered.
Of course, these stories have been fictionalised and reimagined to create a literary narrative for contemporary readers. But one thing is certain: they are remarkably difficult to forget. Mention any of these names to me now, and the story attached to them comes rushing back almost instantly.
One of my favourite aspects of the book was the authors’ note preceding each story. These notes offered valuable context — they helped me understand the narrative the author was trying to construct, where they were coming from, and what compelled them to tell this particular story. I also appreciated the way the book consistently questioned orthodox schools of thought without turning its retellings into an attack on anyone’s beliefs or sentiments. It created space for questioning, reinterpretation and curiosity without sacrificing sensitivity.
Naturally, I loved some stories more than others. That could be because of the sheer drama of certain narratives, or simply because I was more invested in discovering the unheard stories of lesser-known figures from the Puranic tradition.
What remained constant, however, was the conscientious effort behind each story. You can feel the research, thought and creative deliberation that went into bringing these women back into the foreground. For that, I applaud every contributor to this collection.
And I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I read these authors. I’ll certainly be seeking out more of their work — and I suspect my mother will too. She barely finds the time to read, but she could not have been more curious as I recounted these stories to her. And perhaps that is the greatest compliment I can give the book: it made me want to tell its stories to someone else.
So, if you are someone who enjoys reading about goddesses, demigoddesses, celestial beings, or the untold stories of lesser-known women from Hindu traditions, Stree Sutra deserves a place on your reading list.
Just be prepared for one side effect: you may finish the book with more questions than you started with — and an irresistible urge to Google every single one of them.
यत्रैतास्तु न पूज्यन्ते सर्वास्तत्राफलाः क्रियाः ॥
Yatra nāryastu pūjyante ramante tatra devatāḥ
Yatraitāstu na pūjyante sarvāstatrāphalāḥ kriyāḥ
— Manusmriti, Chapter 3, Verse 56
“Where women are honored, the divine energies delight; where they are mistreated, all actions and rituals become fruitless.”
I first heard a recitation of the Garuda Purana back in 2013, and thirteen years later, I found myself hearing it again. Quite coincidentally, I was also reading this book around the same time. Since several of the stories in Stree Sutra draw upon or mention various Puranas, including the Garuda Purana, the timing felt almost serendipitous.
Stree Sutra is a wonderfully curated collection of 22 stories by 22 authors, each exploring the lives and legends of divine and celestial women from Indian lore — Yoginis, Yakshinis, Apsaras, Gandharvis, Nagas, and many more.
Some might find the word mythology more appropriate here, but I personally hesitate to use it. The Vedas and Puranas are deeply intertwined with our history, culture and religion, and I have never been able to experience texts like the Ramayana or Mahabharata simply as fiction. They occupy a space that feels far more complex and intimate than that.
What struck me most about all 22 stories was their sheer feminist energy. I found myself talking about them constantly with my family. More than anything, the book awakened an almost insatiable epistemic curiosity in me — the kind that makes you finish a story and immediately reach for your phone to Google everything you can find about the woman you have just read about.
From Muchilottu Bhagawati’s resistance against patriarchy and Abirami’s boundless compassion, to Bonbibi, the protector of the Sundarbans; from the Yoginis, the secret guardians of the earth, to the fascinating dichotomy of Aashan Bibi, who is referred to as a Muslim Durga; from Amritangi’s spiritual awakening of a sadhu to Hidimbi, the woman extraordinaire; from Rambha and the violation she suffered to Tilottama’s shattering of stereotypes; from Dakini, the embodiment of the divine feminine, to Kola Bou, guardian of cosmic harmony; from Kaikesi’s silenced maternal voice to Devi Kalijai, goddess of the lake; from Revati, cursed and then extolled, to Nilawanti, the anti-villain; from Dhari Devi, Mother Nature, to the complex interplay of selfless love and desireless duty in the stories of Renuka and Matangi; from the unimpeachable Varudhini to Bhadrakali, the first avenger; from Garh Devi, she who rests in the ravine, to Punjikasthala’s transformation into Anjana; and finally, Sulochana, the unhonoured — each story opened yet another door into a world I realised I knew remarkably little about.
My mind simply could not stop feeding on it.
The entire book is steeped in a fierce and compelling feminine energy, and that was one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed reading it. The other was my genuine fascination with the women who never quite found their way into the grand narratives I grew up hearing. We know the central figures of our epics so well, but there are countless women standing at the margins of these stories — women whose own narratives are equally fascinating, complicated and worthy of being remembered.
Of course, these stories have been fictionalised and reimagined to create a literary narrative for contemporary readers. But one thing is certain: they are remarkably difficult to forget. Mention any of these names to me now, and the story attached to them comes rushing back almost instantly.
One of my favourite aspects of the book was the authors’ note preceding each story. These notes offered valuable context — they helped me understand the narrative the author was trying to construct, where they were coming from, and what compelled them to tell this particular story. I also appreciated the way the book consistently questioned orthodox schools of thought without turning its retellings into an attack on anyone’s beliefs or sentiments. It created space for questioning, reinterpretation and curiosity without sacrificing sensitivity.
Naturally, I loved some stories more than others. That could be because of the sheer drama of certain narratives, or simply because I was more invested in discovering the unheard stories of lesser-known figures from the Puranic tradition.
What remained constant, however, was the conscientious effort behind each story. You can feel the research, thought and creative deliberation that went into bringing these women back into the foreground. For that, I applaud every contributor to this collection.
And I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I read these authors. I’ll certainly be seeking out more of their work — and I suspect my mother will too. She barely finds the time to read, but she could not have been more curious as I recounted these stories to her. And perhaps that is the greatest compliment I can give the book: it made me want to tell its stories to someone else.
So, if you are someone who enjoys reading about goddesses, demigoddesses, celestial beings, or the untold stories of lesser-known women from Hindu traditions, Stree Sutra deserves a place on your reading list.
Just be prepared for one side effect: you may finish the book with more questions than you started with — and an irresistible urge to Google every single one of them.
October 4, 2026
As Indians, we have grown up surrounded by gods. Thousands of them, tucked into temples, forests, rivers, mountains, village shrines and household rituals. Every corner seems to have a story attached; be it a local deity, a forgotten goddess, a yakshini or a demigod whose name we've have heard in passing but rarely stop to ask - who was she? What happened to her? Why do we remember her this way?
We grow up hearing these lores as background noise. They just become part of us, stroeis our grandmothers told us or something we heard at a temple or mentioned in a story we read as kids. How often do we actually stop and look beyond the version we heard?
Stree Sutra, edited by Koral Dasgupta, is collection of 22 stories centred around female deities, demigods and yakshinis - women who have existed somewhere at the edges of our mythology and pulls them into the spot light.
Each story peels back another layer of these familiar lores to expose the wrongs buried underneath — the injustice, the silencing, the abandonment - all the ways women were made peripheral to stories that were never really peripheral to their lives. The authors didn’t merely retell mythology but reimagined them to give these women the narrative space they were denied. Each story is brimming with feminine energy.
The woman standing somewhere in the margins of an epic is no longer "someone's wife", "someone's mother", "someone's daughter" or another footnote to a hero's story. She IS the story.
These women, some familiar and some almost forgotten, were so startlingly alive. Their anger, grief, desire, resilience and choices stopped being mythology and started feeling human.
Stree Sutra made me want to go down those rabbit holes to find the local legends, the obscure goddesses, the stories we have heard a hundred times without ever really listening to them.
Perhaps India isn't just a land of thousands of gods and goddesses.
Perhaps it is a land of thousands of stories about women who were never allowed to occupy the centre of them.
And these 22 stories defiantly put them there in their own quiet way.
We grow up hearing these lores as background noise. They just become part of us, stroeis our grandmothers told us or something we heard at a temple or mentioned in a story we read as kids. How often do we actually stop and look beyond the version we heard?
Stree Sutra, edited by Koral Dasgupta, is collection of 22 stories centred around female deities, demigods and yakshinis - women who have existed somewhere at the edges of our mythology and pulls them into the spot light.
Each story peels back another layer of these familiar lores to expose the wrongs buried underneath — the injustice, the silencing, the abandonment - all the ways women were made peripheral to stories that were never really peripheral to their lives. The authors didn’t merely retell mythology but reimagined them to give these women the narrative space they were denied. Each story is brimming with feminine energy.
The woman standing somewhere in the margins of an epic is no longer "someone's wife", "someone's mother", "someone's daughter" or another footnote to a hero's story. She IS the story.
These women, some familiar and some almost forgotten, were so startlingly alive. Their anger, grief, desire, resilience and choices stopped being mythology and started feeling human.
Stree Sutra made me want to go down those rabbit holes to find the local legends, the obscure goddesses, the stories we have heard a hundred times without ever really listening to them.
Perhaps India isn't just a land of thousands of gods and goddesses.
Perhaps it is a land of thousands of stories about women who were never allowed to occupy the centre of them.
And these 22 stories defiantly put them there in their own quiet way.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews