When I think of the ancient world, my first thought is Egypt and its pyramids. The grandeur, the architecture, the allure of those structures constructed in many cases 5,000 years ago pulls us even today. While India has no such monument from ancient times, she has given the world a far greater gift; that of the greatest story ever told: the Mahabharata.
I was a little girl when I first read the Mahabharata; one of those picture books with vivid images and descriptions. Since then, having graduated to the more grown-up texts, I have read the story countless times and each time, to my amazement, it has taught me something new. Each time I have come across a new way to look at the world, learned a new facet about the many characters in the story, and appreciate the wider implications the story is trying to convey.
While we all know what the overarching storyline is about – the victory of good versus evil – the Mahabharata has several complex nuances to it as well. The story reminds us that there is always a reason behind people’s actions, that not everything is what it may seem at first, and that there is usually more to something than what first meets the eye.
Of course, any talk of the Mahabharata is incomplete without paying homage to the Gita, the Song of the Lord, the beautiful scriptures that teach us so much about the way of living and our duty.
In our everyday life, humans are quick to forget what this ancient text teaches us. We don’t have time to peer into other people’s actions or understand the reason for their behavior. We are quick to judge, our fleeting world where information is at our fingertips forces us to come to a quick conclusion and so we label everyone haphazardly: hero, villain, anti-this, or anti-that. Unfortunately, most of us have meted out the same treatment to the Mahabharata.
As a result, we have forgotten the good deeds of Duryodhana, reducing him to a power-hungry man greedy to capture the throne. We misplace the enormous kindness he showed to Karna as an “enemy of an enemy is my friend”. We have forgotten about the complexities the Pandavas experienced within and among themselves clamoring for Draupadi’s love; we never even talk about their arguments and we have simply sidestepped why Shakuni was so bent on destroying the entire Kuru clan.
Nowhere, though, is this injustice felt more severely than with the greatest queen of all time, Draupadi. Not only is she blatantly misunderstood for her actions, but she is also misjudged and blamed for events that were not her fault. The reality of the story is there is no greater character, besides Krishna, in the Mahabharata than Draupadi. The fact that we fail to see this is our limitation, not hers.
Draupadi was not responsible for the Mahabharata War, neither was she was not an aggrieved woman constantly nagging her husbands to seek justice from those who had wronged her. She was a remarkable woman who was married to not one but five of the greatest warriors of all time. In our modern times, monogamous marriages often fail, leading to a divorce. We are then forced to ask – how did Draupadi manage to be married to five men at the same time? And that too five men judged by history as the greatest to have ever lived. What did she have to undergo to manage to live with and love them?
The character of Draupadi, just like real life, is nuanced and in many cases limitless in its elegance. Born from the fiery pits as an adult, she did not experience normal life at any point. Despite this, she occupies a special place in the Mahabharata not only as wife to the Pandavas and as Krishna’s sakhi, but also in her own special way. For one cannot simply imagine the Mahabharata without her.
The saying goes, “behind every great man is a woman”. Although I think it's outdated and women have stepped up in a society in a million different ways charting their own successes and careers, nowhere is that adage truer than in the case of Draupadi. The five greatest warriors, I believe, owe their achievements and historical, everlasting fame to none other than their wife. Draupadi burnt through the very last flicker of her flame so her husbands could shine.
To understand Draupadi, we need to peel the layers of her persona and open our minds to her endless possibilities. Only then will we be able to truly grasp her majesty.
Trihayani: the Story of Draupadi comes out December 2021.
Comments