A Night full of Love: The Story of Draupadi

A Night full of Love: The Story of Draupadi from The Dharma Forest by Keerthik Sasidharan.

Draupadi, has always been above and beyond the chaos and yet at the very center of it, trying to protect her husbands at any cost, wondering whom to trust. 

Susharma was king of Trigarta, who vowed to to either die or kill Arjuna as part of a larger plan by Duryodhana to capture Yudhishthira alive in Kurukshetra war. For this, he formed a suicide squad on 11th night of the war. After Bheesham fell down on 10th day, Dronacharya was made commander-in-chief of Kaurava army. Duryodhana asks his guru to capture Yudhishthira alive.

Drona did his best and when he was almost about to capture Yudhishthira, army raises an alarm and Arjun blocks his guru’s chariot.

Drona, unable to defeat Arjuna before sunset returns without fulfilling his promise.

He says to Duryodhana that, Yudhishthira cannot be reached as long as Arjuna is in the battlefield. So, it is important to engage Arjuna or distract him for a day.

Hearing this, Susharma volunteers to do this job. He wanted to take revenge on Pandavas, especially Arjuna, who won Draupadi in swayamvar, where susharma failed to hit the fish’s eye with an arrow.

Drona warns that facing or challenging Arjuna is equal to suicide. 

Sudekshna informs Draupadi of the plan. Spies crawled everywhere during war. 

Draupadi always had Krishna's prayer with her "It is kings who must tremble in your presence".

To Yudhishthira, she revealed to be the kind of woman who sought to make the best of the circumstances she found herself in. To Bhima, she appeared unburdened by the past, and eager to get on with life. To Arjuna, she seemed determined to yield to none but the very Tuth that she believed lay at the heart of any matter. To the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, it was suddenly clear that unlike most, she had ability to sufer and fight past moments of self-doubt. She would grow into the lives and minds of each of them, life fog that slips through trees. Imperceptibly, inescapably. 

Behind every just ruler - once Yudhishtira had said to Draupadi - was an unjust regime of spymasters who use every tool in their trade to patiently architect an edifice of lies, layered with truth and half-truths. Both sides - spymaster and spies - were engaged in a dance where neither trusted the other fully. Both kept an eye for the knife blade during this intimate pirouette. Like love, in spying, it is the powerful, the more self-assured who suffered more. The weak were reconciled to small defeats and smaller humiliations. Spies were true radicals. 

To others Yudhishthira was like Dharma, the God of Righteousness; Bhima was like Vaayu, the God of powerful Winds; Arjuna was an incarnate of Indra, the Kings of all Gods; the twins, Nakula and Sahadeva, were born of the Ashwins, the God of Health and wisdom. For years, despite living with them, amids their sweat, farts and burps, she too had believed in this story. But one day, seated in the great Kamyaka forest, the folly of such abstractions burst out. Each of tem carried within themselves darkness and light, as fierce and fascinating as the forest itself. They were swayed by circumstances, by the inescapable clouds of fortune and ill luck that showered on them. The very cheerful Arjuna could also be melancholic, the very powerful Bhima could sit around desultorily hurt by headaches and pains. They too were vulnerable men, who needed both, love and freedom. That night she had discovered on her own, in an epiphanic revelation, the secret to a deeper, viscous, coagulant love into which she sought to drown the rest of her life with her husbands. 

The night full of love had to wait, for the Gods of war awaited their offering. 

'Daughter of Drupada', also referred as Panchali and Yajnaseni, is the tragic heroine, one of the central characters and the common wife of the Pandavas in, Mahabharata, who had 5 husbands, and they used her in the game of dice.  After he lost Draupadi in the game, she was humiliated by the Kauravas, Shakuni and Karna, it was Krishna who saved her. She had taken a vow, that she would leave her hair open, untill they were washed in the blood of Kaurava brothers. 

After the event of Lakshagriha, Arjuna, his mother and brothers decide to hide from Hastinapura. One day, Arjuna comes to know that Drupada is holding an archery tournament to determine who should marry his daughter Draupadi. The tournament was to lift and string a bow, and fire arrows to pierce the eye of a golden fish only by looking at its reflection in the water. At the Swayamvara, almost all the assorted monarchs were unable to complete the challenge. In the end, Arjuna, dressed as a Brahmin, wins the tournament. Annoyed by their defeat, the kings attack Arjuna, but he defeats them and runs home to tell his mother of his success, shouting "look what we have found". Commentators vary as to whether Kunti thought he was referring to alms found in the forest or to some great prize unknown to her. She tells him that the find must be shared with his brothers, as they had always shared such things in the past.

This misunderstanding, combined with the protocol that the oldest of the brothers, Yudhishthira, should marry first, leads to the agreement that all five brothers marry her. This is one of the rare examples of polyandry in Sanskrit literature.

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