Born from a ritual fire, Draupadi
was destined for greatness the moment she stepped into the world. But that
destiny never arrives the way she expects it to. While she's still a girl in her
father's palace, she sneaks away to visit the sage Vyasa, who warns her of a
grand future: She will marry the five greatest heroes of her time and "be the
mistress of the most magical of palaces," but she will also be responsible for
the worst war of the age. When Draupadi begs the sage for a way to escape fate,
he gives her sound advice; as always, though, the wisdom of prophets is easier
to hear than to follow.
Draupadi's story was first
told in the Mahabharata, an ancient
Indian poem of more than 90,000 verses that serves as historical epic and
religious text. Between discussions of Hindu philosophy and ethics, the poem
focuses on the struggles for the throne of Hastinapura between the Kaurava and Pandava
families. The five Pandava brothers are the heroes Draupadi marries, and,
through three moments of shamed arrogance, she provides the impetus for the 18-day
war that decides the issue. In The Palace Of Illusions, Draupadi (who later names
herself Panchaali) is given the chance to explain her actions. Her tale is full
of wonders, but they're more like the echoes of distant storms than any local
weather.
In the introduction to Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
describes her love for the original epic, and her desire to place the women in
the forefront of the action. On those terms, she largely succeeds; Draupadi is
a complex, impassioned heroine with a wry sense of humor, and the women who
surround her are fierce and uncompromising. As her story is a small part of the
Mahabharata, Divakaruni works hard to hit the highpoints of the poem, and here,
she's less successful. There's something mundane about Draupadi's struggles in
context, especially an oft-thwarted romance that could've stepped whole cloth
from a Lifetime Original. Illusions is well-written and inarguably well-intentioned,
but many of its pleasures come from its source material; they still retain their
power, but reading them in this context is a distinctly second-hand experience.