The
"Palace of Illusions" by Chitra Divakaruni tells the
story of Mahabharata, as viewed by Draupadi. In fact, Draupadi is the
protagonist as well as the narrator of the story. This itself gives the book a
freshness and Divakaruni deserves kudos for the idea. Once you grant that it is
difficult to do justice to a complex epic as the Mahabharata in 360+ pages, the
book is quite an interesting read. It has feminist undertones – for it casts
Draupadi as an intelligent, and independent thinking person, who wants to
control her own destiny. This book reminded me of the mono act play that I saw
about 20 years ago, where this lady from Karnataka (forget her name) enacted
the untold story of Sita, Gandhari, and Draupadi, from their perspective. It
was interesting to hear two distinct streams of reviews of that play - one
called it irreverent and the other called it thought-provoking. Any guesses on
the predominant gender in each of these two groups?
When Draupadi was not present at events that were essential for
sequencing the story, Divakaruni made her dream or just imagine those sequences
and pulled it together later with an epiphanic “aha! so my dream was true” by
Draupadi. I thought this was a clever strategy to keep the flow of the story.
Of course, the author could not make Draupadi dream every scene from the
Kurukshetra war, the narrative of which forms more than a
quarter of Mahabharata. So, she gave Draupadi the power to see the war
with her mind’s eye, much like Dhritarashtra's charioteer Sanjaya
had. Divakaruni took such liberties with the original to make this story work.
Mahabharata
characters (even including Krishna) are shown to act and behave like humans –
with grace, with pettiness, with greed, jealousy, cunning, and connivance. Divakaruni
has taken this aspect to the next level in her book. One event that immediately
comes to mind in this regard is when Drapaudi comes to Kunti’s
(exile) home as a new bride. Kunti asks her to cook brinjal giving her a lump
of salt (sic) and a minute amount of oil to cook with. Draupadi does not trust
Kunti when she says there is no other spice available (This is it. This is not
your father’s palace!”) She is quite sure that there are more spices hidden in
an alcove, for she saw the grinding stone in the kitchen stained yellow! When
Draupadi struggles with the brinjals to save them from getting scorched, she
sees a faint smile on Kunti’s face and realizes that if the fish had been
Arjun’s test, this was hers!
Through
practically the whole book, there is this thread of romance between
Draupadi and Karna and Draupadi's secret yearning for him all through. Perhaps,
this made the book more interesting to the average reader? I had never read
about this romance before; but then I am not an expert. Chitra spends quite a
bit of time on this topic and makes it almost credible.
Overall, an enjoyable, easy-to-read narration of a great, complex epic;
but one to read only after you have read or are familiar with the original
Mahabharata.
