Reviewer: Saptaparna Roy
Text: Indomitable Draupadi, Sanjukta Dsagupta, Hawakal Publishers (22 November 2022), English, ISBN: 978-93-91431-8-22, Paperback, 140 pages, Rs. 350
Sanjukta Dasgupta’s Indomitable Draupadi (2022)1 has turned one year old in November, 2023 and follows two of her interesting titles, Lakshmi Unbound (2017) and Sita’s Sisters (2019)2 among her seven published collections of poems. What is the purpose of a belated review of a book of poems? The answer is simple- Indomitable Draupadi has bolstered the poet’s singular consciousness-raising progressive protest in India, given the series of her intensive work in the same direction. Her forte as a poet who experiments with and reinvents mythological female characters is well established and now with this novel title, Dasgupta forays into an uncharted ground of effortlessly intermingling the mythical and the real. The footnotes that follow some of the poems mostly direct the reader to newspaper reports on real events that have riveted the attention of a sensitive and sensible soul. Strikingly, the fully capitalised dedication of her book, “for/ All Argumentative Draupadis of the World/ Resist, Rebel, Reinvent, Reimagine” contextually situates her effort towards social revisionism by acknowledging the unsung Draupadis to sustain their struggle against all repressive systems.
The poems in this collection have been published in newspapers, edited anthologies and journals since 2020. Dasgupta attempts to reconcile “… the tussle between a shape-shifting world and the challenges of self-actualisation, my writing is my activism.” (Prologue)3. There are sixty four poems that celebrate “… the many Kurukshetra battles4 that women fight within their homes and in the world … resonate in the minds of the empathetic readers and remain with them for a long time.” (Prologue). She cites from Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism (2014)5 to underscore how epical women such as Draupadi from the Mahabharata are a feminist’s dream or a sexist’s nightmare. Interestingly, there are seven poems on Draupadi interspersed throughout the collection weaving continuity into the narrative; the changing narrative voice ranging from the first person to the third infuses diverse points of view to the articulations.
The rhetoric of resistance and resilience resounds through the poems, unmistakably interconnecting the real episodes of violence on women’s bodies. Through the shocking episodes of Suzette Katrina Jordan’s gang rape in Park Street in February 2012, Shipra Ghosh’s gang rape and murder in Kamduni in 2013, a Dalit girl’s rape in Hathras, the Hanskhali gang rape in April 2022 of a fourteen year old high school girl, Nirbhaya’s gang rape in Delhi in 2012, Bilkis Bano’s gang rape in 2002, the chopping of the wrist of Renu Khatun, a twenty four year old woman from Ketugram, and Ankita Bhandari, a nineteen year old receptionist’s rape and murder at a resort and many more unnamed victims in Unnao, Katwa, Gujarat and Hyderabad, Dasgupta highlights the intersectionality in the socio-cultural backgrounds that informs these oppressions. Regarding the violence perpetrated on the preteen girls, adolescents or adult women, Dasgupta underlines, “No caste, religion or class exempt”. She interrogates the sociology of crime whether it is rape, gang rape, sati, jauhar, or self-immolation and jolts the reader out of any complacence often felt through consolatory candle light marches.
Incidentally, the Epigraph from Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism (2014), “Many Hindus name their daughter Sita, but few name them Draupadi (563)” at the beginning of this book compels the reader to re-think how the history of onomastics in the Indian subcontinent has been well-crafted to suit patriarchal convenience. The seven poems that are exclusive meditations on Draupadi- “Dear Draupadi”, “Argumentative Draupadi”, “Draupadi’s Dissent”, “Draupadi’s Saree”, “Draupadi’s Tresses”, “Draupadi’s Dilemma”, and “Oh Draupadi” initiate a novel discourse instating Draupadi as an icon for Indian women. In the opening poem “Again”, Dasgupta questions “When did it begin…” (17) to probe the continuum in the vilification of women which has been “A timeless unabashed national sport!”. The other poems on epical women- “Ode to Gandhari”, “Kunti”, “Ahalya”, “Madri”, “Milennial Sita” and “Secular Saraswati” 6 engage in a dialogic exchange with the Draupadi poems, creating a trail and relating the past with the present, times when nothing much has changed in terms of gender equality and justice. Dasgupta’s hallmark- terse phrases, ironic expressions, clinching endings and the synthesis of the epodic and the real characterise her poetic oeuvre as evidenced particularly in the poem titled “Millennial Sita”.
In “Dear Draupadi” which is scripted in the form of a direct address, Dasgupta politicises how Draupadi belongs to the “minority club/ Along with Kali, Kunti, / Gandhari, Manasa”7 (18). While Draupadi’s beauty and grace has always been valorised over her strength, Dasgupta surmises on the power of her voice, “At least your blistering curse/ The complete erasure/ Of the ruthless Kaurava dynasty/ Echoed and re-echoed/ In the bruised air” (19). Incidentally, we recall the powerful interrogation from the feminist Bengali poet Mallika Sengupta’s long narrative poem, “Draupadi Janma” from her epoch-making collection, Kathamanabi (2014)8- who has given the right to the husband to gamble away his wife? Correspondingly, Dasgupta argues how kings and princes can take several wives in the Mahabharata on their own free will but women are forced to have more than one husband, a fate that at least Draupadi had to yield to- “Yudhishthira said in an oracular voice/ …Draupadi was partial to Arjun/ Her pitiable fate was pre-ordained” (20).
In “Draupadi’s Saree” Dasgupta presents a raging image of Draupadi: “the thousand of threads/ Of that fiery saree/ Wait like serpents/ To create a new epic/ In these transformative times!” (35). Incidentally, Tagore in his poem, “Vastraharana” from his volume Kanika (1899)9 makes a reference to Draupadi’s impending disrobing in the court room. In “On the Wings of Hummingbirds, Rabindranath Tagore’s Little Poems: An Invitation to a Review-cum-Workshop”, Ketaki Kushari Dyson states: “I would paraphrase the original poem thus: ‘Saying “I’ve won this world”, fearsome Death tries to rob it [i.e. the world] of Life, which is its robe. The more he pulls at the cloth, by the grace of God the cloth goes on increasing for ever and ever.’ ... Death thinks he has ‘won’ the world, just as the Kauravas had ‘won’ Draupadi at the game of dice, and proceeds to take off the world’s robe, which is Life itself, just as Duhshasan had tried to pull off Draupadi’s sari. But thanks to God’s blessing, this cloth is for ever renewed, just as Draupadi’s sari had been augmented by Krishna.”10 Contrapuntally, Dasgupta foregrounds in “Oh Draupadi!” that the brutal reality that modern-day Draupadis face is bereft of any rescue narrative wherein no sakha (companion) Krishna arrives to save a woman from a mishap: “No one wraps a comforting cloth/ Around the drooping bare shoulders/ Of a denuded Draupadi/ In our times” (58). Redemption was not meant for a woman like Draupadi so she had to fall before she reached the gates of heaven. Quite grippingly, Dasgupta raises the critical question about women’s desire that is never discussed let alone being recognised. The poem “Draupadi’s Dissent” caustically imbues a Marxist angle to the sharing of Draupadi by the five Pandava brothers: “My Marxist mom-in-law’s maxim/ Changed my life forever/ … Share equally my boys/ Sharing is caring, remember” (28). The irony of destiny played out during the swayamvara11 is deftly underlined by Dasgupta in “Draupadi’s Dissent” when Draupadi self-admonishingly admits her own casteist attitude: “… self-choice swayamvara/ From freedom of choice/ To compulsory polyandry” (28) and simultaneously confesses her admiration for Karna in “Draupadi’s Dilemma”.
Dasgupta in “Draupadi’s Tresses” establishes a strong relationship between Draupadi, a “cloned kid” of the “furious Divine Mother”, and Kali, the “Eternal Mother”: “Every night I dream of/ A head without hair/ Every night I dedicate/ My dark nude body/ To Kali, my rebellious Mother.” (42). In the footnote she expatiates, “Indeed, Draupadi is closely connected with the dark goddess Kali”, citing the reference from Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism (2014). In fact, Draupadi is considered to be Kali’s ‘ansh’ or an incarnated form and she unites with Kali after her death according to the Devi Purana and Devi Bhagwat Upapurana. Sanjukta Dasgupta actualises a daring effort at re-crafting Draupadi’s voice in poetry, an accomplishment which very few feminist writers have attempted in genres of prose; in a similar vein, Mallika Sengupta’s novel Sitayana (1996)12, Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi (1984)13, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions: A Novel (2008)14 and Shaoli Mitra’s play Nathabati Anathbat (1983)15 are classic examples of re-writing the epic through the feminist lens. Incidentally, Dasgupta does allude to Mahasweta Devi’s Dopdi Mejhen, the female protagonist of the short story “Draupadi” from the collection Breast Stories (2010)16, a fiery rebel of the Santhal community in West Bengal who resists the actions of the tyrannical landlords, featuring on the hit list of the police and suffering custodial rape. Dasgupta’s argumentative Draupadi, a five-star wife, feels the ennui, anguish and sufferings of life- “My body aches/My mind aches,/ My heart aches/ My soul aches/ Like the tired soles” (30). The sagas of the Draupadis of our times come across as “…recurring images and impressions (that) have been indelible timeless spots of time instilled in our nation’s collective memory, through the centuries” (Prologue). These poems will live long in the minds of the readers and continue to provoke arguments, perturbance and discussions. Dasgupta’s Indomitable Draupadi is a unique, subversive retelling of the patriarchal narrative by different Draupadis, questioning all operative forces within familial, social, cultural and national systems. Dasgupta’s writing hits hard on the face, her words pacing in a circulatory motion- palpable and realistic, gritty and witty.
Endnotes
1Indomitable Draupadi: Draupadi has been valorised for her beauty and charm by Ved Vyasa in the epic Mahabharata but her intellect, irrepressible spirit, undaunting nature and argumentative style has been underscored by Dasgupta as the apposite epithet “indomitable” suggests.
2 Lakshmi Unbound (2017) and Sita’s Sisters (2019): Dasgupta’s fifth volume of poems Lakshmi Unbound (2017) was published after an interval of nine years following her collection More Light (2008) that contained several poems on Hindu deities. In Lakshmi Unbound (2017) she depicts the goddess as a metaphoric extension of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”. She contemporanises the roles of goddesses and female epical characters to engage in a feminist dialogue to inspire a social change. Again, in the Preamble to Sita’s Sisters published in 2019, Dasgupta justifies her selection of the volume’s title:
In selecting ‘Sita’s Sisters’ as the title poem of my sixth volume of poetry, I feel the battle for gender equality and gender justice will have to go on, in a resolute and concerted manner… and urge my readers to read these poems as texts of resistance and resilience, confidently gesturing towards inevitable social change.
3In an interview with Basudhara Roy, Dasgupta mentions, “I often reiterate in my talks the one-liner from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s essay A Defence of Poetry: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” https://lucywritersplatform.com/2022/05/12/sanjukta-dasgupta-in-conversation-with-basudhara-roy/
4Kurukshetra battles: The Mahabharata war also known as the Kurukshetra war, forming the basis of the Bhagavad Gita, as detailed in the epic Mahabharata occurred due to the familial discord between two dynasties, the Kauravas and the Pandavas for their succession right over the royal seat of Hastinapur.
5This collection includes over sixty essays and lectures delivered by one of the most prolific scholars on Hinduism, Wendy Doniger focusing on the essential concepts of Hinduism.
Doniger, Wendy. On Hinduism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
6“Ode to Gandhari”, “Kunti”, “Ahalya”, “Madri”, “Milennial Sita” and “Secular Saraswati”: Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, and Sita are the panchkanya from the Hindu epics. Ahalya, the wife of sage Gautama, being a woman of integrity was beguiled by Lord Indra and lived as a stone for being a fallen woman following a curse until Lord Rama revived her. Kunti was one among the two wives of King Pandu who had the sole responsibility of raising all the five children including Madri’s children which she undertook with dedication and care even in the midst of the hostility from the Kaurava dynasty. Madri, Pandu’s second wife and the mother of Nakul and Sahadev, died on the funeral pyre of her husband and became a sati upon the realisation of her alleged role in her husband’s death. Sita, born from Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi and raised as the adopted daughter of King Janaka, is the wife of Rama in the epic Ramayana who endured the fire test to prove her purity, fortitude and uprightness of her character. Gandhari, the princess of Gandhara and wife of Dhritarashtra, was the mother of one daughter and a hundred sons of the Kaurava dynasty who had decided to live her life blindfolded because her husband had lost sight. Saraswati is a Hindu deity who has been a household name from the Vedic times to the present. According to the Vedas, she is revered as a water goddess who has purifying powers and as per the Dharmashastras, her devotees contemplate on virtue and the meaning of karma (actions). Along with Mahakali and Mahalakshmi, Saraswati is one among the three deities of Shakti known as Tridevi who was created by Lord Brahma as the most beautiful woman to restore balance to his creation being the deity of knowledge, music and the arts. Dasgupta selects these sacrificial yet powerful women from Indic literature to bring out their unique contribution, dilemma and dignity.
7minority club/ Along with Kali, Kunti,/ Gandhari, Manasa: Ibid. Kali, Kunti, Gandhari and Manasa have been clubbed together as women who epitomise power and subversive acts. Goddess Kali has been propitiated as an icon of rebellion in Bengal, being accepted as a home-grown deity of depressed communities to the temple effigy of high-caste Hindus, even being appropriated within the revolutionary political narrative of nationalism. Manasa is worshipped as a Hindu goddess of fertility who is symbolised as the deity of snakes, Vishahari (antidote to poison). She is the wife of saint Jaratkaru and mother of Astika. She is known for her ire on account of the dismissal from her father Shiva, stepmother Chandi and her husband; Manasa is venerated as a figure of dissent.
8Kathamanabi (2014): Mallika Sengupta’s Kathamanabi is a long narrative poem fusing the voices of different epical and legendary women such as Draupadi, Ganga, Razia Sultan, Medha Patkar, king Yayati’s daughter Madhabi, the Adivasi girl Malati Mudi, Shah Bano, and Khana, presenting history from a feminist perspective in the genre of protest poetry.
Sengupta, Mallika. Kathamanabi. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2014.
9“Vastraharana”: This four-liner poem from Tagore’s volume Kanika (1899) depicts a metaphorical image of life and death on this earth.
Tagore, Rabindranath. Kanika. Calcutta: Visva-Bharati Granthalaya, 1899.
10The article “On the Wings of Hummingbirds, Rabindranath Tagore’s Little Poems: An Invitation to a Review-cum-Workshop” by Ketaki Kushari Dyson can be accessed here: https://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/reviews/RadTagRev1.html
11swayamvara: This Sanskrit word meaning ‘self-choice’ refers to a custom in ancient Indian society wherein a princess could exert her will to ceremoniously select her partner from a host of suitors who had to overcome challenges in a skill test at a court.
12Mallika Sengupta’s novel Sitayana (1996): Mallika Sengupta’s novel Sitayana is based on the Uttara Kanda of the epic, Ramayana. Sita is the central character in the text that maps her journey as an exile in Valmiki’s hermitage. The novel is an exceptional rendering of the feminist and subaltern point of view wherein Sita revisits the episodes of the grand narrative and portrays them through the eyes of women, adivasis and shudras.
Sengupta, Mallika. Sitayana. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers Pvt. Ltd, 1996.
13Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi (1984): This novel originally written in Odia by the award-winning author Pratibha Ray humanises the character of Draupadi to etch out her relationship with her closest companion Krishna. It begins in an epistolary mode and presents Draupadi’s life from the hindsight when she is approaching death. She was born of a sacrificial fire (yajna), a birth that was prophesied, and was named Yajnaseni who would exact retribution for her father Drupad.
Ray, Pratibha. Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi. New Delhi: Rupa, 1995.
14Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions: A Novel (2008):
This novel weaves myths, history and magic in an intricate web that projects the epic in a different light with Panchaali playing the lead role and narrating the tale. Panchaali is represented as a fire-brand woman who jostles with fate, war and warriors, having avowed to reclaim her five husbands’ rights.
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Palace of Illusions: A Novel. New York: Anchor, 2009.
15Shaoli Mitra’s play Nathabati Anathbat (1983): Scripted and performed by the ace Bengali theatre personality Shaoli Mitra, this play focused on the trials and tribulations of Draupadi presents her dilemma as the wife of five powerful husbands still remaining unprotected. Inspired by Yuganta: The End of an Epoch (1967)- an analytical book on the Mahabharata by Irawati Karve, Mitra had decided to undertake a meaningful project of re-interpreting the epic from a woman’s point of view, highlighting the vulnerabilities and suppressions of the titular character.
16 Mahasweta Devi’s Breast Stories (1997): Mahasweta Devi’s Breast Stories (1997) is a collection of striking short stories that centre on the breast as the leitmotif. The breast, according to Spivak (Introduction) is beyond a symbol and functions as a counter-offensive to the oppressive patriarchal system. Dopdi Mejhen, the female protagonist in the story “Draupadi”, is a tribal rebel who after being subjected to custodial rape transforms her mangled breasts into the object of protest.
Devi, Mahasweta. Breast Stories. Trans. and ed. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Kolkata: Seagull Books, 1997.
