Mistress of an epic

This is what makes her latest book such a surprise. She has found a subject that is perfectly suited to this kind of overkill — a re-telling of the Mahabharatha (it’s spelt Mahabharat in the book, but old habits die hard and we shall persist with the old spelling) and suddenly it seems that her voice, far from being too shrill or too Americanised, are those of an expert story-teller.

She holds you in her thrall. She gives you the entire panorama of the epic — which itself is quite a feat given that others have struggled to contain it by presenting it in consecutive docu-dramas like a television serial — without losing either focus or detail. She brings in the minor episodes as a natural part of the conversation that her characters might engage in while spending their time in the gorgeous palaces and gardens. She is also astute enough to jigger up the narrative with a few “Will She? Will She Not?” moments of nail-biting tension by introducing certain character twists that make the Mahabharatha as thrilling as watching episodes of that evergreen drama of greed and lust, Dynasty. This is despite the fact that we all know perfectly well what happens next in the longest running epic in the world.

Her great triumph is to present the story from the viewpoint of Draupadi. For those who have seen the Peter Brook nine-hour theatre version of the Mahabharatha, it’s difficult not to be reminded of the brilliant performance of Mallika Sarabhai’s interpretation of Draupadi. It was not just Brook’s direction but Sarabhai’s own vivid personality that created a Draupadi, who was feisty, feminine, able to respond with a different kind of sensual pleasure to each one of her five husbands and at all times be in control of herself, even when the Pandavas failed her so miserably.
So it is with Divakaruni’s Draupadi. She’s ever bit a woman of her own. She’s the smarter one of the two children of King Drupad. Her dark complexion, which is also mentioned in the texts, results in one of her other names, Krishnaa. This allows Divakaruni to suggest a bond between the real Krishna that forms one of the most attractive strands in the re-telling of the story.

One might not quite agree with the role that Divakaruni imposes upon Kunti, as the thin-lipped mum-in-law, who is always at cross-purposes with Draupadi, given the much more subtle interpretations made by a scholar like Iravati Karve. What is however fascinating is the secret attraction that she creates between Draupadi and a mystery man, who shall remain unnamed in the review, since it might spoil it for the readers. It not only adds a sizzle to the old story, it shows that Divakaruni is indeed a storyteller par excellence, no matter what her methods.