Book Review - Palace of Illusions by Chitra Divakaruni

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.