The Lady Who Died One and a Half Times and Other Fantasies by Manoj Das

This is a bunch of stories of eminent writer Prof. Manoj Das, falling into an odd category where he has taken advantage of the wide range of freedom and flexibility fantasy as a form allows, but that he has done only in order to present observations on mice and men that are aspects of probability and reality at different psychological and occult planes.
Of the eleven stories (the twelfth is almost a novelette), seven are expansions of and development over tales from the Jatakas and the Panchatantra. The narration clearly indicates the point where the original version ended so far as the plot is concerned (even though that part too is retold by the author in his own way in keeping with the totality of the story), and then from where the author builds up or expands the narrative according to his own inspiration. To leave no scope for any ambiguity, readers the bare outlines of the original versions though they are widely known.