Excerpt
The monsters are conundrums in God’s creation;
Their contrary features defy a clear classification.
To all those monsters, certain things are common:
They have peculiar features that cause confusion;
They possess magical powers, and, what is more,
For each of those monsters there is always a hero
Who would either kill or disable it sooner or later.
Each monster is invariably gifted with a disparate
Physiognomy, an anatomical combo of this or that,
Limbs of multifarious beasts, as if Mother Nature
Who was then in an inchoate state of procreation,
Was tinkering with life-forms, hence did engender
A woman with eagle’s wings and the body of a lion;
Women with serpentine bodies; the body of a man
With a bullhead; a race, half equine, half human;
A lion with a goat’s head having for its tail a python;
A single eye in the forehead; crazy flowers in tares;
Women born old; hags with live serpents for hairs.


The hero and the monster stand for opposite poles:
The first represents Order, the second, the Chaos.
This book narrates the story of ten noted monsters,
And that of as many heroes equal to their powers.
Each tale pans out the making of one such monster,
Its depredations, ending with its ultimate surrender
To the evolutionary principle embodied in the hero.


In the feudal times, a resourceful cook Naga Singh
Tantalizes a heaven-obsessed and monstrous king;
While seemingly satisfying that king’s own desire,
He sends him packing to a paradisiacal hereafter.
Polyphemus, one of the huge, single-eyed Cyclopes,
Is shrewdly disabled by the Homeric hero Odysseus.
Physically comely, but insidious-voiced Siren sisters
Are turned innocuous by the ace musician Orpheus;
The Greek prince Jason acquires the Golden Fleece
By outmaneuvering the Sleepless Dragon of Colchis;
The Chimaera, a composite of goat, python and lion,
Is attacked and killed by Pegasus-riding Bellerophon;
Noble Perseus beheads Medusa, the mortal Gorgon.
The Hydra of Lerna is hacked and burnt by Hercules;
Theseus enters the Labyrinth and slays the Minotaur;
Atalanta, Theseus and Hercules kill many a Centaur;
The Sphinx, who held to ransom the state of Thebes,
Is outwitted and consequently destroyed by Oedipus;

These events, culled from the works of Apollodorus,
Homer, Ovid, Hesiod, Pindar, La Fontaigne & Apollonius,
Have been narrated in verse with attention to detail.
By the way, I have cooked up the King and Cook tale.