Yama

What happens to us when we die? People have asked this for as long as there have been people, and Hindu thought gives one of its most elaborate answers. Death is not an ending there but a turning point in a cycle of rebirth, and the soul is said to pass through 84 lakh births before it arrives in a human body.

In this short book, Devdutt Pattanaik looks at Yama, the lord of the dead, who is said to be bound to Naraka because he was the first human being. Along the way he takes up some playful but pointed questions. Do Swarga and Naraka look the same for everyone? Could there be VIP sections that can be booked? Why do the Kauravas end up in Swarga while the Pandavas find themselves in hell?

Pattanaik goes back to familiar stories from the tradition and reads beneath the surface to find what they say about life, judgment and rebirth. It is a brief, light-handed introduction to Hindu ideas of the afterlife, and it is part of his Devlok series.