Draupadi, the modern Indian woman

"You see, Draupadi from the Mahabharata was married to the Pandavas, the five brothers. Great woman, of course, but who will want to name their daughter after a woman who, er, was shared between five men? You know what I mean, no? It is like tempting fate. Now, what is your good family name, sisterji?"

So goes a character meeting the mortal Draupadi in Trisha Das' new book Ms Draupadi Kuru: After the Pandavas.

Famously won at a swayamwar by Arjuna, Draupadi (quite the favourite of authors ranging from a veteran like the late Mahashweta Devi to Trisha Das) is enjoying a revival of late as the model for independent womanhood. Earlier representations did not give her much agency as an individual, portraying her more as martyr, shaming those who witness her disrobing.

But increasingly, she is emerging from the straitjacket of the vastraharan as a woman who was courageous, who questioned a man's claim on her, not just someone "who serviced five men; a woman whom no one would name their daughters after for fear they might share her destiny".

Das' version of Draupadi is not always evenly written or reimagined but she is drawn as the most powerful of the four stellar women of the Mahabharata - Kunti, the woman who could never claim Karna; Gandhari, who sacrificed her sight to tie herself to the blind Dhritrashtra; and Amba who turned her rejection by Bhishma into a lifelong obsession.  

The men in Ms Draupadi Kuru are shown as self-absorbed, much like the Bhima and Yudhishtr in Akshat Verma's Mama's Boys (one is busy working in the gym and the other playing and losing at cards).

In Ms Draupadi Kuru, Draupadi says: "She had spent virtually her whole life juggling the five of them so that none felt less of a husband to her than the others. Each had constantly tested her: Yudhishtra with sarcasm, Bhima with fits of jealous rage, Arjuna with self-pity and endless 'what if' conversations and Nakula and Sahadeva with defiance and sulking. She had cajoled, calmed and even coerced them on a daily basis so that they remained fit to function as rulers without killing each other. Exhausting for five women, let alone one. But then that was me, thought Draupadi with a look of disgust. Ever the tireless one, ever the pillar for all and sundry to lean on, the self-sacrificing little wife who always considered the good of society and her family above her own needs. 'Bah!'" 

Akshat Verma's modern take on Draupadi in Mama's Boys, a recently released short film, does seem to be spirited but unfortunately only in its carnality. Played vapidly by Aditi Rao Hydari, she is a sex kitten rather than a woman of the world, interested in feeling up Bhima's muscles and in Yudhishtr's raffish charm.

Happy to have been won by Arjuna, she quickly gets the meaning of her mother-in-law Kunti's advice while she welcomes her to the family: "Paanchon ko khush rakhna beta."

Sweet isn't it? Mother-in-law as enabler. Draupadi as goddess of sex.

But is there anything to beat Mahashweta Devi's Draupadi?

I leave you with just this passage from the short story translated by Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak:

"Draupadi's black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting and sharp as her ululation, what's the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man?"