**Yojnagandha Draupadi - Pooja Sharma's AT**#9 - Page 78

Every day, henceforth, for thirty six years, Bhima will remind me and my husband how he killed our hundred sons. When we sit down to eat, just as when we are about to put the food in our mouth, he will crack his knuckles so that we hear the sound that came when he broke their bones or ripped open their chest. Draupadi will try to stop him, but he will justify his actions, "They must never forget their children's villainy. They were quiet when you screamed for help in the gambling hall. Their silence led to the death of your sons and my Ghatotkacha. Why forgive them? Let me have the pleasure of reminding them how I killed each and everyone of their hundred sons. How they begged me to stop and how I drank their blood."

If I had eyes, says Gandhari, I would look at Draupadi and demand to know is this the end she wanted when she screamed curses at my sons? Yes, they disrobed you and you have washed your hair in their blood. It was right they were killed. Now, look at me, I am your victim - the victim of your justified outrage: a weeping mother, old, alone, a blindfolded woman with a blind husband, destitute, criminal parents who never looked at their children, a wretched couple who were blind to the faults of their children. We are paying the price of poor parenting. We deserve this, yes. Does it make you happy to see us so?

Krishna came and hugged her. She wept. And she felt Draupadi weeping next to her. Both were being hugged by Krishna, the mother of villains and the mother of heroes, both being comforted by he who they say is God. He said nothing. He allowed Gandhari to vent out her venom and he accepted the curse quietly - no retaliatory curse. Yes, his children would die as Gandhari had deemed fit and so would he. Let his clan suffer so that the spiral of vendetta does not continue. It has to end sometime. And if this demands the sacrifice of his clan, then let it be so.

Look Draupadi, your hair has been dyed with the blood of Gandhari's children. But in getting that blood, so much rage was generated that it cost you the lives of your five sons. Was it worth it? Could you have forgiven? Or was vengeance the only recourse? Is vengeance ever the answer? He who strikes another always believes he is right in doing so - they are heroes, they are martyrs. But ask the one struck down - they will call the hero a villain, they will call the martyr, a terrorist. Gandhari weeps for her children - her heroes, your villains. You weep for your children - your heroes, her villains. When will this stop? Will humans discover the power to share and forgive, strike the root cause of violence?

Draupadi's position in The Mahabharata is unique in more than one sense. She is accorded the honoured position in the galaxy ofpanchakannihai, in spite of the fact that she was the symbol of polyandry. Such was her chastity. For the same reason, her curse would have the power of becoming true, not the angry words of a dishonoured woman. The Puranas say that she was the wife of a Rishi who awaited her consent to take to tapas. He thus waited a thousand years. He awarded her the boon of marrying in her next birth men who were emanations of Siva. By no means was she an ordinary human soul. She was born out of the fire when theyaga of a Rishi ended.

The episode in the court when the dice game was played changed the fate of the Pandavas. It brought infamy on the venerable head of Draupadi. She was dragged to the court by her hair by Duryodhana's brother. Duryodhana, in the height of his victory, ordered her humiliation. Her pathetic appeal is heart-rending. It was addressed to Pithamaha Bhishma. He was all sympathy, was crying on seeing her insupportable condition, but he could not bring himself to speak in her defence. Again and again she raised her voice and made her appeal poignant, directing it to the King, Drona, Kripa, and Vidura in turn. In despair she pleaded with Gandhari to protect her womanhood. All was in vain. Her saree was pulled and pulled until Lord Krishna relieved her of her agony and shame. The venomous Dushasana lay on the floor in a swoon.

Now her anger was unleashed. The raudra in her emerged. She was no ordinary soul. Her humiliation had no precedent. She cursed the entire dynasty of Kurus; she cursed the throne; she poured her venom on Duryodhana and Dushasana and Karna. Gandhari, who felt helpless when the woman in her was appealed to, now suddenly awoke to the magnitude of a holy woman's curse.The curse of a pure woman is a destroying ashtra from heaven. Gandhari came into her own. After Draupadi's curses had rolled out, she pleaded with the King and she pleaded with Draupadi to withdraw her curse. The King came to his senses, revoked the Pandavas' condition of slavery, and returned their kingdom,. It was not the crass injustice to a defenceless woman who was his own daughter-in-law that moved his stony heart, but it was the prospect of a pure woman's curse. Gandhari was at last moved by her own self-interest, not by any sense of righteous anger or wounded dignity. Man fails to move until his OWN SOLID interests are in danger. He is human and karma does havoc with him. He who moves by the right cause is Spiritual.

http://www.karmayogi.net/?q=node/566

Grief of Gandhari

Tears rolling down her puffed red eyes she asks, "Was the retribution so important, that lead to the brutal killing of my hundred sons?"

Refusing to leave the side of those severed bodies of her sons she says, "Though the world has abandoned them, branded them as epitomes of evil and even though they are dead I will do everything in my power to protect their bodies, the bodies which I gave birth to."

Crying she remembers those days of her pregnancy, how the pots of ghee contained her sons-to-be-born, how she waited for the slightest movement in any of them.

Her agony at the prolonged pregnancy, her pain at delivering those hard pieces of lifeless flesh, her joy at Vyasa's remedy for assured birth of her sons; and her excitement during those days of waiting, her happiness at Duryodhana's birth and her sorrow when she remembers her brutal fate which forbid her to look at her loving Duryodhana.

Crying she remembers those hundred small hands tugging her saree to catch her attention, silently requesting her to unfold her blindfold, and she cursing her fate every moment she touched them, heard them, but couldn't see them.

Crying she comes back to the present moment, caressing the body of her dead son, suddenly she felt a tent in the thigh of her beloved son, that reminded her of the brutal and unethical killing of her dearest son, and a sudden surge of anger filled her heart. The moment she was about to curse Bhima, chilled cruel laughter rang her ears, four men laughing and her beloved son ordering Dushasana that he wished to see his maid naked, "disrobe her" he yells. Tears rolled down her cheeks on her defeat, all anger gone but misery and sorrow at its place.

Another voice rang up, Draupadi's this time, "You have no right to shed tears", says that cruel face, a pitiless smile spread across it, "I have my revenge at last, they deserve it, you deserve it for giving birth to these immoral beings". The laughter " cold and merciless - cut deep before it disappeared.

Gandhari stood up abruptly, turning around for the source of that voice, yet found none. Was it her own conscious showing mirror to eyes held blind? But being a mother she rejects the reality. She accuses Draupadi of being heartless, "Does it satiate your desire for revenge, now that you have dyed your hair with my son's blood, now that you see your sons' dead bodies, now that the killing of thousands of young men is upon your head, are you satisfied now?" Can ever she be answered?

Her deep grief filled heart, denies any escape, solace. Then suddenly a voice from the past comes to her rescue, an innocent loveable voice laughing at her, daring her to catch him, she takes him in her embrace, kisses him and he laughs - that adorable familiar laugh. Leaving the grief of present, she looses herself in those happy memories of the childhood of her Duryodhana, her innocent and sinless Duryodhana.

http://thoughtalive.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/grief-of-gandhari/

We saw the play at Sudarshan yesterday. The play is about a hypothetical dialog between Gandhari and Draupadi after the war. The play was deeply moving.

Gandhari is apprehensive about meeting Draupadi after the war. So she asks one of her closest dasi-cum-friend to role-play Draupadi, as if to appear for a mock test before an exam. There are multiple facets to Draupadi's personality - she is a mother who's lost her sons, she's a woman, she's the maharani of Hastinapur, etc. Neither Gandhari nor her dasi have any clue regarding the role Draupadi would assume. As mothers, Draupadi and Gandhari both share the trauma of having lost all their sons. The only difference being, Gandhari knew in advance her fate. Draupadi's sons, however, were killed unethically after the war had officially ended

When the real Draupadi came in, she was a kind of a combination of all these roles.

She opened her heart out to Gandhari. Draupadi had constantly been used as a means to serve some purpose, from the time of her wedding. In order to maintain unity between the Pandavas, Kunti had asked her to marry all of them. Culturally, this wasn't tolerated. Polygyny was the norm, but polyandry was unheard of. She was used as an machine to produce heirs for the throne. There must have been a period when she was either pregnant, or available for intercourse for the next husband. None of the Pandavas' sons were now alive, even those from their individual wives. Now that Uttara's son - grandson of Arjun - too was born dead, Kunti asked her whether she still continued to menstruate. Her services were again being asked for. None of the Pandavas had grieved over the loss of Draupadis' sons as they had grieved when Abhimanyu or Ghatotkach had died.

Draupadi couldn't comprehend why Karna's son Vrishasen couldn't be the next heir to the throne. Since all the Pandavas - like Karna - had been born out of Kunti's niyog, he was as much a Pandava-child as her five children. Gandhari explained this would entail bringing the truth about Karna being Kunti's son out into the public. According to Gandhari, the difference between Pandavas and Karna was that, the former had been born with Pandu's consent.

Gandhari asked Draupadi how she'd gotten over the grief of her sons' death so soon. Draupadi told her how Krishna had brought some actors along with him, and they enacted the entire Mahabharat from start to end before them. Draupadi was surprised to find the actress playing her role crying profusely over the death of her children. She realized that life was nothing but a play where we are destined to play our roles.

The only solution, Gandhari claimed, was for Draupadi to wear a strip over her eyes. This was unacceptable to Draupadi. She saw the true Gandhari. According to her, Gandhari's wearing a strip was a pretense of her conjugal fidelity. Her true motive was to revenge her deceiving - Gandhari hadn't been informed about Drithrashtra's blindness until after she'd arrived in Hastinapur. She refused to be Drithrashtra's eyes. She didn't open her strip when the Kauravas were born, or as they grew up. These weren't happy events she longed to see. However, she did open her strip to witness the death of all of her children, after the war had ended.The end of Kuruvansh was her sole purpose in life.

While the world thought that Gandhari had put on the strip to deny herself the pleasures that her husband missed, the real reason was that she didn't want to be his lifelong support. Draupadi claimed that this, being remembered in history as a pativrata was Gandhari's greatest sorrow.

http://mcctheatre.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%8B%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B5/