The Draupadi Project

In the Hindu mythology, Draupadi is one of the five significant women. The others are Sita (Ram’s wife), Tara (Vali’s wife), Mandodari (Ravan’s wife), Savitri (Satyavan’s wife). These women played important roles in the lives of their respective husbands to change their destinies. That was sort of unheard of and unexpected in a predominantly male society then (and even now).

According to some versions, Draupadi was an adopted daughter of king Draupad. By any account, Draupadi’s life was a mess after she got married because she was forced to share herself with five husbands merely on a casual remark made by their mother.

When Arjun won Draupadi in a Swayamvar based on a test of his archery skills and took his new 'acquisition' to show off to his mother, Kunti, his mother, apparently too busy to even look at what he was showing, instructed him, “Share with your brothers.”

For Draupadi that must have been a domestic nightmare tough to adjust to and handle. While polyandry may seem like liberation for a woman in what was then a patently unjust patriarchal system of exploitation, in reality, it wasn’t so.

Draupadi’s life tells us that having five husbands is no guarantee for safety.  She was molested and disrobed in the presence of all her husbands and her elders by her husbands’ cousins in public.

Ganapati and Vyas who sort of co-authored the epic Mahabharat may have realised the heinous nature of the molestation and gave it a slightly more tolerable twist by making Krishna magically appear and give Draupadi reams of robes so that she wouldn’t be seen in the nude in public.

By any standard, this is a horrific tale of a woman being robbed of her dignity. It is also a story that keeps repeating itself – the stupefying and deafening silence of men in the face of such an atrocity.

At a time when all the men sitting in the Hastinapur durbar of Dhritarashtra should have stopped Dushasana from dragging Draupadi by her hair, make her sit on his thigh and attempt to disrobe her, they preferred silence, or impotent rage (as expressed by Bhim).

Sharada Eswar’s The Draupadi Project is a retelling of the myth in a contemporary setting. Draupadi was also known as Panchali, the daughter of the king of Panchal. In Eswar’s version, Panchali is a young 19-year-old girl who has been imprisoned and is rationalising her situation and circumstances by chatting with herself, while imagining that she’s chatting with Draupadi.

The young woman is seeking answers that all women seek – her status in a society that perennially objectifies her and has little or no use except for reproduction or pleasure.

The backdrop of this monologue is an internecine war between a state and its own people. It could be anywhere in the world – the indigenous women in Canada seeking justice, the Tamil rebel in Sri Lanka or the tribal women in Sukama (India).

For those who don’t know, the Naxals (Moaists rebels) killed 25 Indian soldiers in Sukama, India last week, in retaliation for the repeated rape and molestation of Sukama women by Indian soldiers.

Eswar’s play is an excellent attempt to bring the focus back on the status of women in general and women in a developing world where they have to fight the state even for their basic right to survive.

Panchali is a naïve participant in a war that she doesn’t want and doesn’t understand; she is used as a pawn to fit into a larger scheme of things that she doesn’t quite grasp. Her immediate connection to her situation is her brother and her young lover.

As the introduction to the play explains, “Confined in a cell, the young woman wrestles with a multitude of voices, the futility of war and the role and status of a woman in today’s society.”

The Theatre Centre at Queen Street, the venue for the play, afforded the required intimacy between the audience and the character that is necessary to comprehend the utter desolation that the character experiences as a woman.

Credits:

A Tamasha Arts Production Created and performed by Sharada Eswar, directed and dramturged by Karin Randoja, projection design by Melissa Joakim and stage management by Sasha Tate-Howarth. For RISER Project: Production management by Deborah Lim, lighting design by Kaileigh Krysztofiak, publicity by FLIP Publicity (Carrie Sager), produced by Why Not Theatre (Ravi Jain, Owais Lightwala, Kelly Read).