I shall tell you all: Draupadi as the Protagonist of the Epic in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions

From time immemorial, it has been an established fact that the protagonist of an epic always has to be a man. Epics all over the world, whether it is The Iliad in the west or The Ramayana and The Mahabharata in the east; have always valorised the male and portrayed him as a larger- than- life quasi- divine figure whose actions determine the future of the entire human community. The scops have sung of the heroic glory of Achilles and Arjuna who have been the saviour-figures and also been instrumental in changing the destiny of an entire community as well as the history of immense topographical spaces. Paradoxically, on a closer look into the epics, we decipher the fact that the whole action revolves around the women, who knowingly or unknowingly bring about the destruction and massacre and consequently the heroic code of warfare which bears the unmistakable stamp of masculinity. Strangely enough: Helen, Sita and Draupadi; the epic women have forever occupied the periphery of the broader epic structures and have been considered as mere epic accessories. Pale shadows of their male counterparts, they have been denied an agency an active agency to voice their inner turmoil, fears, sorrows, emotional conflicts, anxiety and rage at a time when the heroic men were engaged on the battlefield fighting in the name of honour, bravery, power and glory and transforming the destinies of humankind. This paper attempts to show how, in her novel The Palace of Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni revisits the Indian epic The Mahabharata by retelling the whole narrative as viewed by Draupadi, the Pandava queen. It focuses on how Divakaruni destabilizes the epic paradigms of the heroic code and problematizes subject positions by providing an agency to the female voice. It also raises questions whether the epic parameters undergo any major changes when seen through the eyes of a daughter, a wife, a mother and most importantly a woman trapped within patriarchal boundaries and rebelling against them