The Palace of Illusions
Book Review
The Palace Palace of Illusions Read this poignant poignantly ly told book for yourself. you rself. You won't won't stand sta nd to hear Draupadi called a kritya ever again. Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have.’ —Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Almost no parents name their daughter daughter Draupadi Draupadi ! unless it's for an upaay, an astrologer's trick to stave o " the the hostile fates by pre !empting their ordained malice with such an 'unlucky' name for the child. For millennia, the fire !born Princess of Panchala has had a bad press in the world of men. She's been casually, casually, brutally brutall y called a kritya # one one who brings doom to her clan $. Ugly sayings based on elements of her story stor y are used to judge the bridal suitability of a girl, like this charming South Indian Brahmin caution, 'Ati keshi pati naasha' ! A woman with long long hair spells destruction for for her husband. So it's really intriguing to find a book that deals di" erently erently with Draupadi ! not a Manushi article or a Gender Studies tract on 'Mythical Women and Agency', but a proper story, like Vyasa's epic, where Draupadi begins. But as often happens with the epics, the grandeur of the story transcends the telling. This pattern can be seen at Shiv Sh iv Pra rata tap p Si Sing ngh h
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The Palace of Illusions
Book Review
work even with the tacky sets, gold crowns, bamboo bows and bunches of pink plastic pearls in the tele !serial versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata? However shoddy the communicator's skills, it's almost impossible to make an epic story flop. And Divakaruni is not bad at all. In fact, she's pretty good in this book. Author herself describes the "Mahabharat" as weaving "myth, history, religion, science, philosophy, superstition, and statecraft into its innumerable stories ! within!stories." No surprise, then, that her novel appears to bulge at the seams with names, tales, crosscurrents and sidebar recaps, for which the family tree and partial list of major characters at the beginning seem scarcely adequate. At times this is a novel that calls for an index. Told in the first person, The Palace of I ! usions takes us through the epic in Draupadi's voice. From being born of the sacrificial fire # thus her beautiful name 'Yajnaseni', though the author doesn't use it, preferring 'Panchali' $, to her strange, lonely childhood, her tricky marriage to five men with a persecution problem and a control freak mother, her own, lovely home at last, and then the unbelievable traumas that follow that nobody should have to go through. Having her home, freedom and honour gambled away, almost stripped in public, her terrible life of hiding, servitude, evading assault and finally, the grim justice of war and a lonely death falling o " a mountain track. Most of this is 'true', as in the original epic. Divakaruni adds other imaginative twists of her own: Which man does Draupadi really love.How does she get to describe the battle? And most resplendent discovery of all: who is the one who really, truly loves her? I can't bear to spoil the charm of these insights. Please read this poignantly told book for yourself. You won't stand to hear Draupadi called a kritya ever again, even assuming you never liked it that they did in the first place.
Shiv Pratap Singh
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