C. B. Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions,
Anchor Books, New York: 2008, 360pp.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a well-known
novelist who writes from the Hindu tradition. Her work sparkles with the
strangeness (to the western imagination) of spells, magic, dreams, deep beauty,
poetic images, many gods, and a free movement through time. As Divakaruni writes, life in all its complexity unfolds; the
epic of existence is disclosed. In addition, Divakaruni
writes in the voice of a woman – not to reveal the abuse of women, not to
demand feminist rights, but to give voice to the woman, to see the world from
the point of view of the woman, and to acknowledge, and use when needed, the
power of the woman.
The Palace of Illusions is the most
“religious” of Divakaruni’s books that I have read.
It is her retelling of a part of the great Mahabharat epic, an epic that has
been told and retold over the millennia. Her story deals with the fierce
rivalry between two branches of the Kuru dynasty, the Pandavas
and the Kauravas. The story begins in medias res:
there has been a drought, there have been wars, and there is the memory of very
good and fruitful times. The princess, Panchaali /
Draupadi, who is the chief character and the narrator
of Divakaruni’s interpretation, is beautiful and
wise. She marries royally to ten brothers and works out an agreeable marital
way of living! And she builds her palace, which is the palace of illusions. As
fate would have it, the men gamble and the chief brother gambles away the
kingdom. The debt must be repaid but the conditions for that are degrading.
And, thus, ensues a series of wars between the members of the two families
which ends tragically.
Divakaruni tells the story with great art. (Fortunately, she provides a genealogical
chart so those of us not already familiar with the characters can follow.) The
supernatural palace of beauty is strikingly told as are the wars waged by human
and divine powers. The interaction of the personalities is alternately fierce
and touching. The tragedy of the characters on both sides of the conflict is
deep. The ending is a surprise (at least to western readers).
As a western reader, I find the complexity confusing but life is like that.
I am not offended by the calling upon many gods, nor by the resort to magic,
dreams, and spells. That is part of the otherness of Hindu culture, and I
accept that.
At the key moment in the drama, the princess is shamed
publicly by her lover and her husbands. She responds with a curse: “All of you
will die in the battle that will be spawned from this day’s work. Your mothers
and wives will weep far more piteously than I’ve wept. This entire kingdom will
become a charnel house. Not one Kaurava will be left
to offer prayers for the dead.” She, then, reflects on her role as a woman:
“All this time I’d thought myself better than my father, than all those men who
inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to
punish the one man who had wronged them. I’d thought myself above the cravings
that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my
blood…” (194-95). The rest of the story, including the ending that exculpates
the princess, unfolds from this moment with ineluctable force.
As a Jewish reader, this is incomprehensible. Jonah prophesies
doom for Nineveh, but the city repents and the decree is voided. People make
vows, but the final chapter of Leviticus provides for the annulling of vows
and, in rabbinic tradition, the High Priest is rebuked for not annulling the
vow of Jephthah (Judges, chapter 11). No gambling debt, no curse binds human
beings so tightly as to make war unavoidable. Repentance is the way out of
ineluctable karma. In the book, Krishna who is king and god at the same time
says to the princess: “Only a fool meddles in the Great Design. Besides, your
destiny is born of lifetimes of karma, too powerful for me to change” (40). In
Jewish tradition, this too is incomprehensible. There is no “Great Design” that
transcends God. Even God is bound to be fair and just. This is the lesson of
Abraham’s argument over the destruction of Sodom (Genesis, chapter 18) as well
as the thrust of the Book of Job – that God can, and must, be held responsible
for evil; fate is not above God. Even the shoah must
be viewed in this light (see Facing the
Abusing God: A Theology of Protest). Finally, in Jewish tradition, the one
whose vanity and whose curse has been central to the story cannot simply be
cleansed of all responsibility at the end.
A very beautifully told interpretation of a powerful Hindu
epic that both captivates and raises serious questions for inter-traditional
dialogue.
David R. Blumenthal
Emory University