Growing up in a conservative Indian household, I was always given examples from the shastras and the epics on how I should live my life. On what the right and the wrong thing was. For some reason dharma was such a favorite word in the family. Except that people did not realise that it was adharmam for showering unsolicited advise on a poor, dreamy-eyed kid.
Written from a very patriarchal perspective, it was all about the men of the epic. As if this is a surprise, isn’t it? Mahabharata however took a special place in my heart. I loved watching the B R Chopra’s TV Serial with my grandpa. I secretly admired Karna for his selflessness and a confused birth, and Duryodhana for his unwavering loyalty towards his friend. Only in the past few years did I realise, the two traits that distinguishes these men from others are the very same one that I saw in myself or something that I longed for earnestly. My ability to live life like “others wanted me to be ” for a birth that let me so confused and an yearning for acceptance from that “someone”. Shikhandi took a place in my heart too but the epic did not care much about him.
Chitra Banerjee’s book however tells the tale as seen through Draupadi’s eyes. Once I picked the book, I wondered how Panchali was able to live through her life , go through the suffering that she had to endure almost always because of the people whom she loved or through a blind sense of faith in her husbands and mom-in-law. As the pages rolled by, I found a great sense of excitement and an unwillingness to keep the book down. I found it hard to get rid of the image of Rupa Ganguly and instead view Draupadi as a progressive, liberal, intelligent and breathtakingly beautiful woman. Chitra Banerjee has very elegantly carved the emotions Panchali faces as she sees the confusion and anxiety in her brother’s eyes over his destiny; her admiration of Shikhandi; the rush of blood as she whizzes past her heartthrob ; the emotions during her swayamvara; the anger and embarrassment at the gamblers court, and so on ..
Not to let fellow Gaysis down (some masala stuff) – Though not in the book, Panchali is believed to have an extraordinary libido. I don’t know the context, but this fact made me happy, very happy. Happy reading everybody!
Loading ...
With all due respect, I think this review is quite unfair for many reasons.
Firstly, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s book is hardly the first to focus on Draupadi. Given that the Indian mind’s mythography is based in the Mahabharata, we have, if anything an obsession with this woman, her courage, her victimhood, her heroism, failures and successes. Divakaruni’s book, is, if anything, a gross exoticization of all that. Draupadi’s sensitivities (as the author’s) appear more Western and regarding everything in her own surrounding not from the eye of the rejected insider or someone who failed to fit into what must be her own, but an almost alien critic, who knows she must live in what is clearly, from the start, a backward and oppressive society. We do not go through that process that is so natural to life, of discovering the good bad and ugly, going through the layers of emotions for the very same spaces and people.
Maybe I’m over-analyzing the book, but my own obsession with Draupadi and love of the complex life she might have lived felt horribly flattened and all the real complexity drained, with Divakaruni’s book. Not that Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni was better or anything, but it was, in some ways, more honest, less contrived in its writing and description, more a book of self-discovery and realization, of trust and betrayal.
Thanks for your thoughts Tink. While I will definitely give Yajnaseni a shot, this was the first book I ‘ve come across with Draupadi’s perspective. I was delighted and even if it might be a little exoticization, as you put it, I can live by it because it still seemed to be a little honest.
I like stories. I have wanted to read this story for a long time now – its truth and many interpretations as well. Thanks Rashmi, this reminds me I should get cracking on that