Reading Notes: Narayan's Mahabharata Part B
Reading B: Narayan's Mahabharata
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| Draupadi from Mahabharata Source: Google Image |
Characters
I liked this part of the Mahabharata so much better than the first one. The story flowed much easier, and I was actually intrigued in what was happening. My favorite character development so far has to be Draupadi. Among all of the characters introduced so far, she has been the only one to make sense. At first, I was indifferent towards her as she seemed to be just another wife, but this part really showed she is a force to be reckon with. After Yudhishthira lost everything, including Draupadi, to Shakuni, she was the only one to question the legitimacy of her loss of freedom and the legitimacy of the entire game. Had it not been for her outspokenness, the brothers, their kingdom, and herself would have all been slaves. Rather than thanking her and staying away from gambling for forever, Yudhishthira gets them in another pickle due to his gambling addiction causing them to be exiled for 13 years. Again, Draupadi speaks up against her husband about his messed up philosophy saying he is blindly following a religion that has forced them all to live like the homeless. I especially enjoyed her rant about God because it matches with many thoughts I have had in the previous years. I'm agnostic so I don't believe in the bible-version of God. At the end of the first half, Draupadi makes the very valid point of saying if God is who he is says he is and as powerful as everyone thinks he is, then why do bad things happen to good people and vice versa. Although I also enjoyed Yudhishthira's kill them with kindness approach (an approach I often take myself to conflict), I was very pleased to see a female character finally sticking up for herself.
I also like Draupadi more now because Bhima compared her to the main character of my project, Goddess Lakshmi. I was very excited to see my goddess mentioned and made a note in my book to refer back to that section in order to assist me in describing her for my project.
Lastly, I wanted to mention I was still very confused as to who was who in this part of the book. I have come to realize there are not only much more characters in this epic than in the Ramayana, but there are a lot more side stories and plots that do not necessarily affect the main story line. Although it has been difficult to decipher who is who, it did give me the idea to include a sort of yearbook or scrapbook in my project created by the goddess Lakshmi so that my classmates will not deal with the same confusion I am dealing with while reading this story. If you are reading this, please let me know if you think this would be helpful!
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