Skip to main content

Draupadi’s Dream


Draupadi wants to beget a daughter by Karna. Bilingual poet [Malayalam and English] K Sachidanandan has written a very short story in the latest edition of the Malayalam weekly, Mathrubhumi. Titled Draupadi’s Soliloquy, the story is an implicit lament on the current state of affairs in India.

No woman can accept her fate with resignation when she has five valiant and virtuous husbands and yet has to stand disrobed in front of a couple of malevolent men who have usurped all powers through means more foul than fair.

Of what value is Yudhishthira’s dharma? Draupadi laments. Arjuna’s famed valour is in vain now. Even the devotion of mighty Bheema serves no purpose. Nakula’s dutifulness and Sahadeva’s courtesy are all futile virtues in this royal court where villainous characters have put on the robes of heroes.

What I want is Karna, Draupadi laments to herself. She has seen the flame that burns fiercely in the eyes of Karna. She has felt the ardour of the passion that fumes in Karna’s bosom. Karna can sacrifice not only his kavacha-kundla but also his very self, if she stands in need of it. Let Karna the Outcast come.

I want a daughter by Karna, Draupadi says. To herself. In the world that is driven by a handful of vicious men, how loud can a woman utter her wishes?

Draupadi wants a daughter who will be a harbinger of a new era in which no woman will be disrobed in royal court that is sustained through manipulations and machinations. I want a daughter who will liberate women from men. A daughter who will liberate my husbands from their macho egos. I want a daughter who will liberate my sons from their ancient hubris.

Draupadi wants a daughter who will be able to laugh happily in the world of men. Not stand disrobed by political chicanery.

A daughter whose heart will have abundant tenderness. Also harshness if needed. A daughter who knows that sacrifice is not only a woman’s duty. A daughter who won’t have to beg for a Krishna’s magnanimity. She will be the Sun’s descendant. From her will a new earth emerge. A new earth where all that exists will be sacred: trees and rivers and hills and valleys and caterpillars and butterflies and… 


Comments

  1. magiceyeMay 23, 2024 at 5:52 PM

    Beautiful! Amen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2024 at 6:54 PM

      Sachidanandan's original is a lot more beautiful. This is my way of looking at Draupadi through Sachidanandan's story.

      Delete
  2. Vinay NagarajuMay 23, 2024 at 6:11 PM

    That's a nice take - sometimes we don't question the mythology enough - the only thing we can do is be rational and ask questions - whether it is history of mythology, it has to adapt to our time - the morals of an old era might not be valid anymore - glad to see and hear about a book that questions that and makes us think

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2024 at 6:56 PM

      Not a book, Vinay. It's just a short story. But there are books on this. Let me suggest one here:
      https://matheikal.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-palace-of-illusions-review.html

      Delete
  3. Liz A.May 24, 2024 at 8:09 AM

    If only...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathMay 25, 2024 at 10:14 AM

    Good one!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
41 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart
14 comments
Read more

Hidden Treasure

Fiction The hill looked absolutely desolate in spite of the massive and aging rubber trees. The flourishing undergrowth bore a solemn testament to neglect. The air grew heavy as I ascended the hill in the evening of a cool and dry day in the monsoon season in Kerala. My destination was the mansion on top of the hill. It had belonged to my uncle who is now no more. His lawyer informed me a few months back that Uncle Jo had bequeathed the mansion to me merely because I loved books just as he did. As a child I used to climb up this same rugged path quite frequently just to visit Uncle Jo who lived all alone in his palatial mansion with the company of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Dostoevsky and so on. I inherited my admiration for these writers from Uncle Jo. Uncle was married once upon a time, people say. But I knew Uncle as a man who lived a reclusive life on top of that hill. His income came from the rubber trees which were tapped by a few labourers who all left the place when the tre
8 comments
Read more

Sex and Man

Book  Title: Up Against Darkness Author: Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran Publisher: Sakal Media, Pune, 2023 Pages: 295 According to an estimate by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), there are over eight lakh women sex workers in India. A good many of them are treated as worse than animals. This book, Up Against Darkness , is a detailed study on the red-light areas of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. The book highlights the phenomenal service rendered by Dr Girish Kulkarni and his wife Prajakta for the sex workers of Ahmednagar. As a boy in school, Girish was restless and full of energy. “He became unruly in class, troubling the teachers and other school children.” The neighbours too had to bear the brunt of his mischiefs. When Girish saw a sex worker smacking her little son in order to get him out of her client’s way, his heart melted. He was a young college student then. He volunteered to take care of the little boy and eventually he became an apostle of the sex workers in
10 comments
Read more

Ashwatthama is still alive

Fiction Image from Pinterest “I met Ashwatthama.” When Doctor Prabhakar told me this, I thought he was talking figuratively. Metaphors were his weaknesses. “The real virus is in the human heart, Jai,” he had told me when the pandemic named Covid-19 started holding the country hostage. I thought his Ashwatthama was similarly figurative. Ashwatthama was Dronacharya’s son in the Mahabharata. He was blessed with immortality by Shiva. But the blessing became a horrible curse when Krishna punished him for killing the Pandava kids deceptively after Kurukshetra was brought to peace, however fragile that peace was, using all the frauds that a god could possibly use. Krishna of the Kurukshetra was no less a fraud than a run-of-the-mill politician in my imagination. He could get an innocent elephant named Ashwatthama killed and then convert that killing into a blatant lie to demoralise Drona. He could ask Bhima to hit Duryodhana below the belt without feeling any moral qualms in what
3 comments
Read more