Old Customs Perfectly Explained (Book Review: The Bearded Prince by Rajesh Talwar)

Title: The Bearded Prince

Author: Rajesh Talwar

The Bearded Prince is the story of the beautiful and creative Princess Roopali and her swayamvara.
She is prejudiced against men with beards. 
The author has justified the prejudice, making it sound reasonable.
And then worked on breaking the prejudice with the story.

The Bearded Prince reminded me of the Vikram and Betal stories. There's the grandeur of royalty and emotions that are common to all, a dilemma and a suspense to the reason behind the reason.

Often when narrating a story to kids, one has to clarify certain instances so as to ensure that they don't get an impression of wrong-doing or prejudices from it.
The author, Rajesh Talwar does it for you and with a touch of humour too. 
"Quite often, people assume that princes and princessses are bound to be good looking people, but they are wrong in their assumption. Anyone closely connected with royalty knows that there are ugly princes, short princesses, princes who are scarred, and princesses who lisp. God and nature have not made any special provision for princes and princesses that might make them in any way more appealing or attractive as human beings than the rest of us."

'A Modern Tale Set in Ancient India' is how it is described and rightly so. It's a tale of olden times told in the language of today, explaining things in a way that the readers who don't know of the old stories would understand.
The author makes a point about equality, individuality and respect for ones' family. 

Princess Roopali is someone with whom the present day kids can relate too.
I do think that although grown-ups would enjoy this book, it the younger lot that The Bearded Prince can truly charm.

The Bearded Prince is a simple story. The simplicity itself and the little details, the thoughtful explanations are really good.

*  *  *

The italicised text in quotation marks are quotes from the book.