The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI

“Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.”

What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book happened to catch my attention as I stood before my bookshelf four days ago. Good books can be read again and again with new lessons sinking into you each time. This one was no different though it’s little more than a retelling of the epic from the point of view of Draupadi aka Panchali.

The Mahabharata is one of the most complex books you can ever read because it has layers and layers of meanings. For example, the character of Yudhishthir. He is a gambler who loses everything including their common and beloved wife Draupadi. Yet this man turns out to be most righteous in the epic, more righteous than even Krishna who is an incarnation of God. In the character of Yudhishthir, Vyasa offers us a profound, non-dogmatic understanding of dharma which is “subtle” according to Bhishma who is another staunch advocate of dharma.

Dharma is subtle because human life is complex. There are no easy answers to most vital questions in our individual lives. Why did Karna have to suffer all through his life for no fault of his? Why did Arjuna stand impotent on the battlefield though he was the best of the warriors with perhaps the sole exception of Karna? [I say ‘perhaps’ because Ekalavya rises with fury in my consciousness – rebelling against the entire “subtle” dharma of the epic.]

I don’t wish to go into those details, however; I wish to focus on Draupadi, Divakaruni’s protagonist. I loved this Draupadi. Not because she is a feminist, which she is. But because of the fire in her soul. It is that fire which burns in the last lines of the novel, which I have quoted at the start of this post. Let me come to that paragraph in a little detail.

The epic war is over. The Pandavas have understood the futility of all that mindless violence which killed thousands of people. What use is a kingdom when all your beloved people are dead – killed by you? The land is soaked in the blood of those people. The moral justification of the war – “subtle” dharma – sounds hollow. There is no celebration after the victory; there is mourning.

They are faced with the worthlessness of it all. Renunciation of power and earthly delights is the only option left to their guilt-ridden, grief-ridden souls. And so they leave for the Himalayas – their final journey on earth. Climb the peaks until your peak takes you to the next world. No one is supposed to look back on the way.

Draupadi falls and she is left behind to die. Each of them will fall when they reach the level beyond which their individual flaw won’t let them proceed. What is Draupadi’s flaw? Bheem wants to know. Yudhishthir knows but he won’t tell the truth – in spite of his staunch adherence to dharma and righteousness. The truth is that Draupadi loved Karna more than all her five husbands.

The concluding paragraph of Divakaruni’s novel brings Karna to the dying Draupadi. Of course, Karna was dead long ago, during the war. Krishna was dead too, after the war. But they are there now with the dying Draupadi, not physically, but as “pinpricks of light” and a “solid” grasp. Krishna, who viewed life from a sublime position that lay beyond dharma and righteousness which allowed him to be playful often and tricky too when required, is a better guide than Yudhishthir with all his morality and righteousness. And Karna is the object of her forbidden desire, the symbol of human passion, pride, and the kind of love that’s destined to be tragic.

Yudhishthir and Bhisma, both apparently ideal human beings in spite of their flaws, are “paralyzed” by their dharma, Divakaruni’s Draupadi reflects while she lies dying on the way to her Himalayan peak. Yudhishthir will reach heaven alone – without relatives and friends – with his dharma. “Ultimate loneliness,” Draupadi calls the situation. [I loved that part of the novel the most.] “The ultimate loneliness: to be the only human in the court of the gods.”

Humans have passions and hence flaws. That is why it is Karna who descends as a balm for the dying Draupadi. None of her five husbands are there with her now. Krishna with his transcendent vision of life and Karna with his robust passion are her final companions. I’m with Draupadi here in her heaven that has space as walls and sky as floor – and a dharma that transcends human codes and creeds + as much passion as I can still muster.

PS. The above is my personal interpretation of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel.

PPS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025