The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

She smiled her squint-eyed, cunning smile. “Child, the things you don’t know would fill the milky ocean where Lord Vishnu sleeps—and spill over its edges.”

Impatient as mustard seeds sputtering in oil, that’s what you are, even though you’re old enough to be married off any day now! Each story will come in its time.

My years in my father’s house would have been unbearable had I not had my brother. I never forgot the feel of his hand clutching mine, his refusal to abandon me. Perhaps he and I would have been close even otherwise, segregated as we were in the palace wing our father had set aside for us—whether from caring or fear I was never sure. But that first loyalty made us inseparable. We shared our fears of the future with each other, shielded each other with fierce protectiveness from a world that regarded us as not quite normal, and comforted each other in our loneliness. We never spoke of what each one meant to the other—Dhri was uncomfortable with effusiveness. But sometimes I wrote him letters in my head, looping the words into extravagant metaphors. I’ll love you, Dhri, until the great Brahman draws the universe back into Himself as a spider does its web. I didn’t know then how sorely that love would be tested, or how much it would cost both of us.

“A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.”

Time is the great eraser, both of sorrow and of joy. In

Remember that, little sister: wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you’ll wait forever.

“He believes it to be so. Isn’t that what truth is? The force of a person’s believing seeps into those around him—into the very earth and air and water—until there’s nothing else.”

He bore his destiny so casually, it made me worry less about Dhri’s and mine. He made me realize the existence of possibilities I hadn’t dreamed of.

the power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won’t get you what you want.

Truth, like a diamond, has many facets.

At night I considered what Krishna had revealed, and why he’d pricked the bubble of my romance no sooner than it had formed. He was trying to teach me something. Was it to be aware of the dark motivations that lay behind seemingly benign actions? Was it to not let myself be carried away by emotion, to see myself instead as part of a larger political design that would affect the fate of Bharat? Was it to teach me how to wear the armor of caution so that no one could reach past it to break my heart? Important lessons, no doubt. But I was a woman, and I had to practice them—as Sikhandi had suggested—in my own way. I would approach the problem aslant. No matter what my father’s intention, I could still make Arjun’s heart beat faster. I could still influence how he thought. Perhaps Time was the master player. But within the limits allowed to humans in this world the sages called unreal, I would be a player, too.

“Your first lesson, princess, is to know how to sidestep questions you don’t want to answer. You do it by ignoring them.”

“Don’t let the waves of your emotion drown you,” she said, fixing me with eyes that were cold as agates. “Understand! Understand what drove a woman like her. What allowed her to survive when she was surrounded by enemies. Understand what makes a queen—and beware!”

Can our actions change our destiny? Or are they like sand piled against the breakage in a dam, merely delaying the inevitable?

This much I’m certain of: Something did change in the moment when I asked Karna the question that I knew would hurt him the most, the only question that would make him lay down his bow. When I’d stepped forward and looked into his face, there had been a light in it—call it admiration, or desire, or the wistful beginnings of love. If I’d been wiser, I might have been able to call forth that love and, in that way, deflected the danger of the moment—a moment that would turn out to be far more important than I imagined. But I was young and afraid, and my ill-chosen words (words I would regret all my life) quenched that light forever.

My tiredness was a screen that shielded me from my fear, from caring about what my husband (how strange that term) would think.

One of the kings blew his battle conch. It was echoed by others. Hurry, Panchaali, Dhri whispered. Why wouldn’t the man meet my eyes? I stood on tiptoe and numbly dropped the garland around his neck. Was this even a proper wedding, conducted with such unseemly haste? He slipped a chain made of cowrie shells, such as poor village women wear, over my head. Against my skin, the shells were like cold, minute fists. And so I was married.

I would no longer waste time on regret. I would turn my face to the future and carve it into the shape I wanted. I would satisfy myself with duty. If I was lucky, love would come. That was what I told myself as we walked and walked, the hot day wilting around us, the pathway of stone and thorn taking me further each moment from everything that had been familiar to me.

I was uncomfortable, miserable, disillusioned—and most of all, angry with Arjun. I’d expected him to be my champion. It was the least he could have done after plucking me from my home. When inside me a voice whispered, Karna would never have let you down like this, I did not hush it.

man looking in through the window. To my blurred, homesick eyes, his face looked like Dhri’s, though that was impossible. And a good thing, too. Dhri would have been enraged to see me like this, lying on the floor at the feet of these men—on my wedding night, no less, when my bed should have been piled with scented silks. When I should have been held close and cherished. But I was no longer my brother’s to protect or indulge, I thought, tears of self-pity filling my eyes. I’d placed a garland around the neck of a man who hadn’t even cared to tell me his name, and it had changed everything.

One moment at a time, I told myself. What use was it to worry about the future, which might take a shape far different from what either Kunti or I wanted? And with that, sleep came to me.

Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.

From the way his voice dipped low I knew what he’d never admit: throughout their childhood my husbands were famished for affection. Kunti had given them her entire steely devotion, but no tenderness. Perhaps she’d cut it out of her nature when she was left in the forest widowed and alone. Perhaps that was the only way she knew to survive.

Love. There’s no argument, no matter how strong, that can overcome that word. I was jealous of Bheeshma for inspiring such a devotion in my husbands—but he had helped me understand something about the Pandavas, something crucial. Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you. No matter how famous or powerful they became, my husbands would always long to be cherished. They would always yearn to feel worthy. If a person could make them feel that way, they’d bind themselves to him—or her—forever.

All things in this world change and pass away—some after many years, some overnight. Appreciate the Palace of Illusions, by all means. But if you identify so deeply with it, you set yourself up for sorrow.

When in great trouble, rest your mind on someone who loves you.

No one can shame you, he said, if you don’t allow it.

“All of you will die in the battle that will be spawned from this day’s work. Your mothers and wives will weep far more piteously than I’ve wept. This entire kingdom will become a charnel house. Not one Kaurava heir will be left to offer prayers for the dead. All that will remain is the shameful memory of today, what you tried to do to a defenseless woman.”

I lifted up my long hair for all to see. My voice was calm now because I knew that everything I said would come to pass. “I will not comb it,” I said, “until the day I bathe it in Kaurava blood.”

What did I learn that day in the sabha? All this time I’d believed in my power over my husbands. I’d believed that because they loved me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me—as much perhaps as any man can love—there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honor, of loyalty toward each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but only when they felt the circumstances would bring them heroic fame. A woman doesn’t think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended on them so completely in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies.

But was a woman’s heart any purer, in the end? That was the final truth I learned. All this time I’d thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I’d thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn’t resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.

I knew I would never find another home where I belonged in the same way. I had another reason now for my hatred.

“A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It’s only your response to it that causes your sorrow. But enough of philosophy! I’m hungry.”

The humiliated enemy is the most dangerous one.

“Where’s my sweet sister who used to bully me and play tricks on my tutor, who used to dream about breaking out of the bonds that shackled women, who was determined to change history?”

She’s dead. Half of her died the day when everyone she had loved and counted on to save her sat without protest and watched her being shamed. The other half perished with her beloved home. But never fear. The woman who has taken her place will gouge a deeper mark into history than that naïve girl ever imagined.

“All through the history of the world, the virtuous have suffered for causes unseen. Learn from Nal and Damayanti to bear your misfortunes bravely. Like theirs, your evil times, too, will come to an end.”

so, that I was no ideal wife. He would have been happier with someone like Damayanti. She was a better woman than I. (But is better the word I was looking for? At what point does forbearance cease to be a virtue and become a weakness?) Once I returned to my father’s home, I wouldn’t have kept searching for my husband. And had I called for a second swayamvar, I would have made sure it was a real one.

Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.

Time gnaws on me, he told Yudhisthir. I fear I will disintegrate before the war even begins. He decided to go to the mountains of Himavan and try, through penance, to please Shiva. He would ask him for Pasupat, the divine astra that would make him invincible.

Why was my heart so weak, so unreasonable? After all that had transpired, why should I care what happened to a man with ancient eyes? Wasn’t he my enemy, the deadly rival of this man who was willing to risk his life to avenge me? My

Krishna turned to me. “Even a curse can be a blessing, Krishnaa. Don’t you agree?”

He was always trying to convince me that bad luck—particularly ours—was really something else, something better in disguise. Caught between him and Yudhisthir, a woman couldn’t even enjoy being miserable.

What is more numerous than the grass? The thoughts that rise in the mind of man. Who is truly wealthy? That man to whom the agreeable and disagreeable, wealth and woe, past and future, are the same. What is the most wondrous thing on earth? Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.

I would be patient. I would be brave. Even this year would pass.

“The life that you’re living today is only a bubble in the cosmic stream, shaped by the karma of other lifetimes. The one who is your husband in this birth was perhaps your enemy in the last, and he whom you hate may have been your beloved. Why weep for any of them, then?”

How little we know our own reputations, I thought with a bitter smile.

I didn’t know how to live without attachment or feel the same way toward honor and dishonor. Perhaps only when one possessed a greater treasure could one let go of this world.

I decided I, too, would have nothing to do with him until I received proof of his caring. I decided this, but it didn’t lessen the sting in my heart.

Thus the war went on, the physical battle outside matching the conflicts within each warrior.