Flower of India: Ways of Seeing the Lotus

In Flower of India, bestselling author and renowned mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik examines the lotus as one of the most pervasive and resonant symbols of the Indian subcontinent. Through its many avatars—as plant, resource, metaphor, design, and sacred form—he traces how the lotus has shaped India’s cultural imagination across history, religion, art, and everyday life. Concise yet expansive, accessible yet intellectually serious, and rooted in both lived experience and wider historical enquiry, this book offers a fresh perspective on the lotus—a symbol central to India’s cultural consciousness, and integral to the nation’s aesthetics, cuisine, erotica, romance, mythology, and spirituality.