For Draupadi, that was a terrible,
terrible day. She was dragged to the Kaurava court by her Kaurava
brother-in-law, Dussasana, and Duryodhana asked him to disrobe her in front of
all present. What needs to be noted is that neither Duryodhana nor Dussasana
nor Sakuni or for that matter, anyone in the Kaurava family, had any complaint against
her and was waiting for an opportunity to take revenge. Had Yudhisthira listened
to the venerable Bhishma and stopped playing the game, Draupadi would have been
safe at home; loss would have been only to the Mahabharata narrative.
Till she was reduced to the status of Duryodhana’s slave, she wasn’t in
anyone’s mind. After losing himself and his brothers, in a moment of sick frenzy,
the hurt loser, who was unable to cope with defeat, ignored his grandfather’s
words and pawned wife Draupadi in the game of dice and lost her. Instigated by Sakuni,
Duryodhana wanted her to be brought to the court. There was nothing wrong in
it, he was assured, because a slave had no right to privacy. Sakuni’s secret agenda
was to push the Pandavas and the Kauravas to the battlefield. His father’s
words came to his mind and he realized that his time had come (for details, see
“The Revenge of the Dead: The Story of the Special Dice of Sakuni”, in this
blog, posted on May 21, 2017). Humiliation of Draupadi would be the humiliation
of the Pandavas - many-fold! - and once she was disrobed in public, that would
have meant that for the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the point of no return had
been reached.
Duryodhana surely didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of Draupadi
being his slave. Would a king ask his brother to go and bring a slave to his
presence? What prevented him to send a few soldiers, if he thought that one might
not be enough? Dussasana had dragged her from the palace but not into the court
yet. When he told his brother that Draupdi was in her periods, Duryodhana said
that he wouldn’t want her in the court because seeing a woman in her periods brought
only misfortune.
Sakuni must have sensed that his plan was going to go awry; so he readily
thought of a different way to persuade Duryodhana. His fear was unjustified, he told Duryodhana;
misfortune would come if the woman in periods was virtuous and since Draupadi,
with five husbands, was not, no harm would come to anyone who would see her. Further
details are unnecessary here. (Essentials of the disrobing episode are given in
the piece entitled “The Disrobing of Draupadi and the Sun god”, which was
posted in this blog on April 4, 2008.)
We may note that she was a pawn in the hands of Yudhisthira and a means
in the hands of Sakuni. She wasn’t the
cause of her suffering; she had done no wrong. Thus, she didn’t have the comfort
of coming to terms with her suffering through acceptance, which comes to the conscientious
sufferer when he realizes that the suffering was morally deserved – a just punishment
for the wrong he had done earlier. And not just Draupadi, we may also note that
once Yudhisthira lost her in the game of dice, Duryodhana also became an
instrument, a means, for Sakuni. And again, not just him, but all those, who, one
way or the other, became part of that chain, Dussasana and Bhima, among others,
unknowingly became his instruments. No one, except, of course, the One who knew
everything and perhaps Sahadeva, who had the knowledge of the past and the
future, knew that Sakuni was the agent, but neither would tell. Neither Bhima
nor Draupadi ever bayed for Sakuni’s blood.
Returning to Draupadi’s humiliation, if it did not move Yudhisthira, in
the sense that he did not want revenge, it did another of her husbands, Bhima,
who thundered revenge - he would tear apart Dussasana’s body and break
Duryodhana’s thigh. But that would happen in future; on that day, none of her
five husbands came forward to protect her from Dussasana. To what extent Draupadi felt reassured that
her torturers would perish one day, we do not know. We only guess that in the
Kaurava court Bhima’s thunder meant almost nothing to her. Five affectionate and
caring husbands; yet, when she was face-to-face with the gravest crisis of her
life, instead of the help she needed, all she got was the assurance of revenge.
For the first time in her life, she realized her vulnerability and the
powerlessness of her husbands to respond adequately in her moment of crisis.
But come to think of it, that day was not really her torturers’ day. It
had turned out to be her day instead. She could not be disrobed and in
the court, she was hailed as a virtuous woman. Her angry look directed at Duryodhana’s
palace, burnt the women’s quarters and the royal inmates rushed out and were
exposed to the public gaze. What Duryodhana wanted to do to Draupadi, in a way
recoiled on his very own. Another angry look, this time at Dussasana, still at
pulling her clothes and he collapsed on the floor. Dritarashtra and Gandhari came
to the court and prayed to Draupadi to pacify her. Dhritarashtra, the head of
the Kaurava family, gave Draupadi what she asked for - her husbands’ freedom
and the wealth they had lost.
By the way, it was also Sakuni’s
day. He had attained his objective for that day; he must have believed that war
between the Pandavas and the Kauravas would certainly take place someday. How
else would Bhima redeem his vows? As for Draupadi’s disrobing, he had
absolutely no interest in it. And he knew that that was not going to happen. In
Sarala Mahabharata, didn’t he tell this to Krishna, after the fire in
the lac palace: “Since you are protecting them, what harm can the imbecile and
worthless Kauravas cause them?”
That day, the Pandavas left Hastinapura in a pleasant atmosphere. There
was bonhomie among the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Says Sarala, “aneka priti
badhila sate uttare panchubrate (there was a lot of affection among the
hundred and five brothers)”. Draupadi’s untied hair and Bhima’s suppressed anger
could not spoil the geniality of the mood. And that surely wouldn’t have made
her feel good, one would think.
Unable to cope with defeat in the game of dice, her husband Yudhisthira
went to Hastinapura desperately wanting a win. So the game was played again.
This time, her youngest husband, not Sakuni, rolled the dice (for details, see “The
Second Game of Dice” in this blog, posted on May 7, 2010). And Yudhisthira lost.
Draupadi found again how vulnerable she was during the twelve-year long
exile and a year’s incognito living. She realized, for the first time, that she
couldn’t protect her husbands when they faced what threatened to be a calamity
for them. Sage Durvasa, who would not forgive anyone for failing to satisfy his
wants, arrived with his disciples and demanded food from Yudhisthira and went
for ablutions. Now, Draupadi was the family’s food giver and she had nothing to
give the guests. It is another matter that things so happened that day that the
awe-inspiring sage did not return.
She found herself vulnerable again, when one day, her brother-in-law,
Jayadratha, Duryodhana’s sister’s husband, took advantage of her being alone in
their hut and tried to molest her. She would have wanted him dead, but her
eldest husband would allow Bhima to only humiliate him. Kin could just not be
punished with death. During their incognito living, the mighty Kichaka lusted
for her. This time Yudhisthira did not constrain Bhima and he crushed Kichaka
to a ball of meat. That immensely pleased Draupadi.
Only once after that she was in that state. That was when Bhima poured
the blood from the mangled Dussasana’s body on her hair. As the blood trickled
down, her tongue touched it. For two aeons she had been waiting for this (see “The
Killing of Dussasana” in this blog, posted on April 3, 2008). After thirteen long
years of waiting, she tied her hair. She invited Bhima to spend that night with
her.
She must have come to know that her five children had been killed before
Duryodhana died. He had humiliated her and with his death, her revenge was
complete. But that was not in her mind then. The loss of her children had
devastated her. She told Krishna that she would kill herself. Then she told
him, “mora putra bairi maribu ehiksani (Right now kill the enemy of my sons)”.
Not to her husbands, but to Krishna she had turned this time. Maybe she knew
that Yudhisthira would not allow his guru’s son to be killed – hadn’t he
disallowed Jayadratha’s killing? The guru’s son had a much higher status than
kin.
Now, all Krishna did was dispossess Ashwasthama of his weapons. And that
too, through cheating, which means he didn’t harm him physically. He showed the
weapons to the weeping Draupadi and told her that he had stolen them. She was “pleased”,
says the poet: “draupadi chhamure dileka debahari / dekhi sananda
hoile je dropada kumari ((He) gave (the stolen weapons) to Draupadi /
Seeing that, the daughter of Drupada was pleased)”.
Was she really pleased? A reader of Sarala
Mahabharata would ask, in disbelief - she isn’t someone who would be
content with so little. She would ask for a sound justification, at the very
least. She did nothing of that sort. So, did she only pretend to be pleased,
realizing that there was no point in pursuing the matter since beyond Krishna
there was just nothing? And there was no point asking Krishna. In Sarala Mahabharata,
his answers and explanations were like his doings. Lila (cosmic play)
does not explain itself. Trying to understand it, the mortals and the immortals
construct their own explanations. And no one’s is privileged.
The war over and won, the Pandava family were talking animatedly about on
whose account the victory was achieved. Draupadi claimed that it was her. But
so did everyone else: the five brothers, Kunti and Subhadra. She didn’t argue. Her
ahamkara (arrogance) was gone, with the death of all her sons, her
brother and her father. She became the queen but the episode of Yudhisthira’s rajyabhisheka
(enthronement) hardly makes a mention of her. One would wonder what happiness
the grieving mother would have felt, sitting with her husband on the throne
during the ceremony of inauguration.
She faded into the background in the narrative. It had lost interest in
her. She had emerged from the sacred fire to kill. Her children’s death had doused
the fire within. In her private moments in the royal palace of Hastinapura, she
must have shed copious tears for her beloved little ones. All alone. As did Kunti. She spent sleepless nights
grieving over the death of Karna, Ghatotkacha and Abhimanyu and she condemned
Arjuna for killing her son. As for Gandhari, what can one say? She had a
hundred sons and she had lost them all. She wept alone, like did Kunti, like did
Draupadi, although the poet Sarala ignores her in the last parvas (cantos)
of his retelling. We do not know from Sarala Mahabharata how she felt when
Krishna passed away.
After they left Hastinapura on their vanaprastha, Draupadi figured
in the narrative meaningfully only once. In the Himalayas, feeling extremely cold, tired
and unwell, she pleaded with Yudhisthira to be allowed to rest for a while.
Yudhisthira said, no. They had come to give up their bodies in the sacred
mountains, so why indulge it, he told her. “A world without Krishna is unfit
for living”, he said. She said nothing. Was she convinced by Yudhithira’s words?
We do not know.
Soon after, she had fallen to her death, before she had accepted death.
Let us end with this: if my understanding of Draupadi in Sarala Mahabharata
is correct, with Krishna, and Krishna alone, deep down, Draupadi felt “at ease”
even when she gave vent to her anxiety, frustration or anger in front of him
and sometimes even targeting him. But his presence calmed her, deep down. The
feeling of ease that we are talking about cannot be called “happiness”, because
happiness is an experience of the ego. She connected with Krishna with an
attitude of surrender, where ego dissolves. And no wonder, since theirs was a relationship
aeons old. It was just that her birth in the mortal world had wiped out that
memory.
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