The Palace of Illusions - Chitra Banerjee Diwakaruni

We often recollect the feminine characters from the epic Mahabharatha as helpless and weak.They usually  portrayed in a way that they were only meant for supporting their fathers,husbands and sons.Their true virtues are always underrated in the process of depicting them.Contradicting with that,writer Chitra Banerjee gave Draupadi,a powerful voice to justify her crucial and substantial role in the epic.The palace of Illisions written by    Chitra Banerjee Diwakaruni is the great epic Mahabharatha from Draupadi's perspective.

She laughed our loud." I can't teach you that",she said."Love comes like lightening,and disappears the same way.If you are lucky it strikes you right.If not you spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.I advise you to forget about love,princess.Pleasure is simpler,and duty,more important.Learn to be satisfied with them.

Copyright A Homemaker's Utopia

Veneagance as seed,Draupadi emerges from the holy fire along with her brother Dhrishtadyumna (Dhri) as  daughter of the Panchala king,Drupad.She is emotionally attached to her beloved brother Dhri.But the princess has no privacy.Being individual and rebellious by nature,she couldn't be happily with her life under her father's too much control.Drupad forces her to concentrate/indulge in  feminine interests.But she was determined to learn what a king was supposed to know.She secretly craves to learn war skills and political lessons only meant for men in those days.She dreams to be queen of her own palace some day (Palace of Illusions).Draupadi shares a special relationship with Krishna.While seeing the portraits of her suitors in Swayamwar,for the first time,she sees Karna.His eyes with ancient sadness makes her fall in love with him.But in Swayamwar,in order to save Dhri's life,she forcibly insults Karna by asking him about his birth.But the moment she realises,she lost him for a life time she had to marry the five Pandava princes and reaches Hastinapur.

My situation was very different from that of a man with several wives.Unlike him,I had no choice as to whom I slept with,and when.Like a communal drinking cup I would be passed from hand to hand whether I wanted it or not.

If the sage was cared to inquire I'd have requested the gift of forgetting,so that when I went to each brother I'd be free of the memory of the previous one.
When I asked him what kind of palace he thought I should have,Krishna said,"Already you live with in a nine-gated palace,the most wondrous structure of all.Understand it well:It will be your salvation or your downfall."

The well known story line-up made me aloof,when I picked up this book.But the spellbound narration made me completely lost in the story.While reading the personality traits of the central character Draupadi,we completely forget that it is an Epic.In this novel,the most powerful and enigmatic woman of Mahabharatha appears as an ordinary woman with many imperfections and shortcomings.Irrespective of her sincerity in performing her wifely duties towards her five husbands,she feel distressed that she couldn't give Karna's place to anyone of them.Its her misfortune,she neither cared the person(Bheema) who loved her most ardently nor loved by the person (Karna) whom she gave her heart.Besides Arjun gets angry,when she obeys Kunti's words and  accepts his brothers as husbands.He also marries Subhadra and shares his major part of affection with  her.Draupadi is a good example for the fact that 'women are naturally doubtful'.Her character portraits different shades as a proud Queen,a distracted mother,a secret lover,a rebellious daughter-in-law,a helpless woman humiliated in Kuru Court,an angry & nagging wife who keep on reminding her husbands about revenge and so on.Her often regrets about her lost love and feels her life couldn't be so miserable if she would have married Karna.The lost lives of her brothers and five sons in the war of Kurukshetra couldn't affect her endurance and determination.She remains stable in those hard times and supports her husbands.It is not an understatement to praise her audaciousness is not less than any great warrior in this epic.

The princess who longed for acceptance,the guilty girl whose heart wouldn't listen,the wife who balanced her five-fold role precariously,the rebellious daughter-in-law ,the queen who ruled in the most magical of palaces,the distracted mother,the beloved companion of Krishna,who refused to learn the lessons he offered,the woman obsessed with vengeance - none of them were the true Panchali. If not who I was ?

Yes I broke the first rule,the unwritten one,meant not just for warriors but all of us.I took love and used it as a balm to sooth my ego.

Coming to the other characters like Dhrishtadyumna,Kunti,Gandhari,Uttara,Sikhandi and Bhanumathi,their roles were a bit more elaborated in this novel.Kunti not only represents the caring mother for the five great warriors of that time but also an authoritative mother-in-law for Draupadi.She never hesitates to take,even the burden of crime on her shoulders to save her sons from wax house.When Kunti meets Karna before war,quite surprisingly,she lures him that he could also possess Draupadi as wife,if he could spare her sons.The role equally prominent with Draupadi is Karna's.Till the end they both share a secret emotional bonding with each other.But Draupadi unintensionally hurts Karna whenever they come face to face.On the other hand,though  Karna loves her,he gets angry with her recklessness and insults.This leads him to take part in her humiliation in Kuru sabha but he repents later.The two people with equal ego and self respect share mysterious and undefined relationship till the end.
He was right,in order for a victory to occur,someone had to lose.For one person to gain his desire,many had to give up theirs.

Remember that little sister:wait for a man to avenge your honour,and you'll wait forever 

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified.
'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.” 

 A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.” 

I realized now that the main reason I'd accepted the sight from Vyasa was for the opportunity to watch Karna the way I never could in real life,to decipher the enigma that he was.Now I understood him-his nobility,his loyalty,his pride,his anger,his uncomplaining acceptance of the injustice of his life,his forgiveness.But the weight of this knowledge that I could not share with anyone was crushing me.

In the path of Mahaprasthana she realizes that all the men in her life loved their 'Dharma' more than her and there is only one true love exists in this world that is 'love of Krishna'.Finally Krishna clears her confusions and ignorance and gives her salvation.If we don't see this novel as an epic,we can define it as an unsuccessful  tale of love.If you read this novel,you surely feel the vision in to the hearts of some great forgotten women in the epic.