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BOOK REVIEW

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS

BY CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

Lazy summer afternoons of our childhood days spent widely
awake, hooked up to the mythological stories from the Mahabhara-
ta, delivered in an inimitable way by our grandparents. This, I’m sure
is one of our fondest memories of growing up. Now imagine getting
to read the stories of the timeless epic but with a slight change in
the voice of the narrator. That is what the subject novel is based on.
What di erentiates “The palace of Illusions” from its contempo-
rary mythological novels is that it is narrated through the voice of
Draupadi, the wife of the legendary Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata with sub-
stantial focus on its other woman characters, as well.
This Women’s day, let us cover one such book based on the longest epic poem the
world has seen, narrated through the eyes of its most popular woman character and the
book being authored by a woman herself, Ms. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, renowned for
her ne portrayal of characters.

The novel traces Draupadi’s life, beginning with her magical birth in re as the
daughter of a king followed by her trepidations and infatuations as a young girl before
being declared as the wife of ve husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s
kingdom. The story draws a beautiful & realistic
pen-picture of how Draupadi leaps into the quest
of her husbands while struggling to balance her
own precarious self-respect.
It is a portrayal of a ery female voice in a world
of warriors, gods, and ever-manipulating hands of
fate. Extrapolating the queen’s character in the
present day world too, her character remains very
much relevant in way of the injustices borne by
women, enslaved under the societal whims.

One favorite line of mine from the book where
Draupadi describes herself is: “I am buoyant and
expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so,
only I never knew it”.

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