To all the enthusiasts of Indian mythology and avid viewers of the Mahabharata on TV, Draupadi is a word synonymous with Disrobing! To the sensitive mind it is synonymous with Dishonour! And to the author it was in sync with Dignity which should have been bestowed on a character known as an arbitrator of war and gore! Panchaali the Princess of Peace is the story of a mythological character that emerges from the fire as full grown woman, with a prelapsarian naiveté which made it hard for her to understand and live in a world because of its newness! Panchaali as created by Inamdar is an intrigued, restless soul who seeks questions, fathoms deceptions, harbours fears and speaks her mind well before her disrobing! Panchaali in the story refuses to marry the five Pandava brothers and walks the path of honour and Peace!
The book is not a feminist retelling of the story of a protagonist who was stripped of all her pride unabashedly in front of her mishpocha! It is a clarion call for each individual to fight for ones dignity and also be a torch bearer for the respect of others. The book portrays this similitude in the honest and soul stirring friendship between Panchaali (Draupadi) and Krishna!
Dushasana kept dragging me by my hair, demeaning me, mocking me, chastising me, and belittling my very existence with his brutal hold and vulgar tongue!
Even as I begged for relief, for help, I was begging for dignity, for respect that was of any woman to own in any circumstance or time!
It seemed impossible in this situation, but the cruelty of the man and my fear made it a stark reality! Why only till that moment I was the revered Queen whose false haughtiness and impeccable beauty were the talk of endless banters! Only till a moment ago, I was a wife to five husbands and yet I found none of them in my plight! I was a Queen and not of any ordinary Kingdom nor of undistinguished men!
Like the endless labyrinth, the moment seemed endless. Why didn’t somebody come to my rescue! How could this man yield so much of power to destroy a woman piece by piece through his immoral touch and verbal vituperations! How inexhaustible and unbounded was Dushasanas’ viciousness. He seemed to derive an opportune pleasure from my pain! Oh stop it, stop it, I pleaded in despair, wishing for an end or some safe harbour in this amaranthine situation!
What made the situation worse and my foreboding full of discomposure was my state of Rajasvala! I was in my month, in a single piece of cloth with my navel exposed! Why was this wretched man taking me to a court full of men in this delicate and vulnerable state, what did he intend to do by taking me there!
I was already in a weakened state by nature. Why didn’t this man sympathize with my situation!
Could it really be me! Could this then be my identity, a woman so weak, so defenseless that she could not even seek relief in her most private days!
He dragged, and I protested; he laughed, and I beseeched; he violated, and I implored to deaf haughty corrupted ears till he threw me in a court dignified!
Proudly, I stood my ground as I tried to stand up and reckon my place in the court! This could not be happening to me. This was not my reality, and this should be no one’s reality!
I feared not a single man in the world leave alone those in the impotent room! Why did I need to be afraid of any man or any human till the time I respected my boundaries and theirs! When I caused no harm, why would any other violate my sense of wellbeing!
Naïve, foolish, fleeceable, Panglossian, and deluded!
Never was a woman raped verbally by abuses, by insinuations, by immodesty, by blatant brazenness as I was in that court, by men who were in my relations and witnessed by men, great men whose glory would be revered by generations to come!
I tried to bear the stage and my predicament by rendering it phantasmal; it was not me who was called a whore, a woman unchaste who slept with five men, five brothers, a slave woman! I lived through those words as if it was an illusion! But as soon as the man called out for my disrobing, I could no longer pretend or fool myself of my gross predicament!
I could fight their verbal arrows and abuses, but where did I take refuge when I was to be stripped of all decency! It was frightening to the pit of my belly. Why did their revenge border on my decency!
Was this their idea of getting even with the Pandavas to destroy me completely!
Is this the utmost that men could do, how imbecile and puerile to the point of absurdity! To take revenge meant to deprecate a woman! To belittle a woman meant to disrobe her and bring her nakedness to fore! Couldn’t their small minds come up with an idea of revenge in a genteel form! Hadn’t they seen nakedness of a woman in their own homes, with their wives!
I placed the men who abused me in the same dishonourable stratum as the men who bet on my name!
Why weren’t the Pandavas disrobed of their apparels! Weren’t they also the losers! It was not revenge that the enemy was seeking; it was lecherous, depraved, viciousness!
I stood vulnerable and yet so proud, so defamed and yet so honourable! Trembling inside amidst the sea of empty relations and feeble excuses, I knew there was nothing I could do to protect my modesty! I saw Dushasana going for the kill and I closed my eyes! As I prayed to the creator, I wished I was given a chance to have averted this precarious quagmire of mine!
