Book Review - Palace of Illusions

Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Same old Mahabharata, refreshing new perspective.

Story told from the enigmatic Draupadi’s perspective. Gripping, read it from cover to cover and then some parts again, especially the last chapter. Have read this author before and didn’t like her all that much, therefore was pleasantly surprised.
Will share some facets of her character that are not commonly known
• The author deals with the relationships that defined her – that with her father, brother and Dhai ma in her childhood, mother in law, five husbands and with Karna in her adult life, the latter for whom she harbored a secret attraction from when she saw him first.
• Draupadi was perhaps never a little girl even when she was one– always strong willed, longing to see the world, sitting in on her brother’s lessons on war to understand what life out there was about.
• We know the incidents that led to the great war – from her bastra haran in Duryodhan’s court where none of her husbands protected her to the twelve year banbash and the supposed fight for the Pandavas rights. What the author dwells upon is her mental anguish at the war Kurukshetra especially since she felt it was her pride, arrogance and desire for revenge that caused war, widowing many and leaving many helpless.
• We also know that the blind Dhritarashtra could see vicariously through his charioteer what was happening at war. But we don’t know that Draupadi had been granted the same vision too and she saw all the misdeeds committed on the battlefield by her husbands including the killing of Karna .
• Nor did we know that she was a not great mother, choosing a life of adventure with her husbands in banbash over being at home with the womenfolk to bring up her children.
• And it depicts her relationship with Krishna, the constant strength in her life. Her playmate as a child, her confidante when she needed one and her protector when she was being humiliated.. Her consort in her darkest of hours standing by her in her when everyone else failed her. Spouting wisdom when she needed it like – “a situation was only as bad as you thought it to be”.. Yet he teased her, never revealed his divinity to her and gave her convoluted answers when she asked probing questions about her predicament.

Why this book is worth a read –the writing is racy, a page-turner. It unravels Draupadi as a real woman – attractive, ambitious, independent minded, strong willed and real limitations like stubbornness and an ego that supposedly led to her downfall. As a woman she fought hard to play the game by her rules, to do what the men in her life did, yet she never quite got equal status.
I was left startled how ancient yet modern the story of Draupadi is. You feel like you know her.

By,
Soma