The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“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.

“When the Supreme Being manifested Himself, the brahmin was born from his head, the kshatriya from his arm, the vaishya from his thigh, and the sudra from his foot.”

Three dangerous moments will come to you. The first will be just before your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you’re shamed as you’d never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse. Maybe it will mitigate the catastrophes to come.”

“I can!” I said, with the confidence of the untested.

A hero is a hero, no matter what his caste. Ability is more important than the accident of birth.

In that hall perfumed with hopes and decorated with anxieties, where pride played the wedding flute and anger the drum, the greatest kings of Bharat were unable to lift the Kindhara bow from the ground.

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

The tallest of them—if I remembered right, his name was Bheem—winked at Arjun. “Mother’s always so serious! Let’s play a trick on her.” Before the others could stop him, he called out, “Ma, come and see what we’ve brought home today.” “Son,” said a woman’s voice in a patrician accent, “I can’t come right now or the food will burn. But as always, whatever you brought should be shared equally amongst all my sons.” The brothers looked at each other, embarrassed.

This is what Kunti declared to her sons yesterday, before she said a single word to me: “All through my life—even in the hardest of times—everything I said, I made sure it was done. I told myself I’d bring you up as princes in the halls of your forefathers, and no matter how much harassment I faced, I held on to my promise. Sons, if you value what I did for you, you must now honor my word. All five of you must marry this woman.”

isn’t that what our homes are ultimately, our fantasies made corporeal, our secret selves exposed?

Fortunate brahmins are sent to Brahmaloka, where they can learn divine wisdom directly from the Creator. The best among kshatriyas go to Indraloka, filled as it is with pleasures both artistic and hedonistic. Lesser warriors must be content with the courts of the god of death, or the sun and moon deities. For evildoers, there are one hundred and thirty-six levels of hell, each corresponding to a particular sin, and each with its own set of tortures, such as tongue-tearing, being boiled in oil, or being devoured by ravenous birds, all of which our scriptures describe with great relish.

He didn’t know the shifting sands on which my freedom rested,

Is the desire for vengeance stronger than the longing to be loved? What evil magic does it possess to draw the human heart so powerfully to it?

“A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It’s only your response to it that causes your sorrow.

Suddenly he reached out and pulled a half-burnt stick from the fire. He thrust it at me so that I flinched back. “What are you doing?” I cried, startled and angry. “Trying to show you something. The stick—it scared you, right? It may even have hurt you, if you hadn’t been so quick. But look—in trying to burn you, it’s consuming itself. That’s what happens to a heart—”

we cannot force ourselves to love—or to withhold it. At best, we can curb our actions. The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.

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

In a grove I came across an old monkey, his tail blocking the trail. I ordered him to clear my path, told him I was Bheem of the Pandavas, son of the wind god. He blinked in confusion and did not seem to know me. Perhaps he was senile. He requested me to push his tail off the path and continue on my quest. I bent down to flick it aside with a finger—and could not! Nor with both hands, nor with the strength of my whole body. I fell to the ground, crying, Who are you? He smiled and informed me that he was Hanuman. “I stared at him. He had crossed the ocean in a single leap to do Rama’s work! I had heard the story as a child and thought it legend. But here he stood, elder son of the wind god—and thus my brother. A god in his own right. He embraced me and said, I give you my strength. At Kurukshetra I will be with you, though none will see me except as an image on a chariot flag.

What is more numerous than the grass? The thoughts that rise in the mind of man.

Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.

The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don’t get attached to them. And: When a man reaches a state where honor and dishonor are alike to him, then he is considered supreme. Strive to gain such a state.

Perhaps only when one possessed a greater treasure could one let go of this world. Krishna hinted that such a treasure was inside me—Weapons cannot harm it; fire cannot burn it; it is eternal, still and blissful—

When Arjun asked why man found himself driven to wrongdoing in spite of good intentions, Krishna replied, Because of anger and desire, our two direst enemies.

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

theft?”

8 Vasus stole Kamdhenu from Vashisht

A ruler should know how to conceal his own weaknesses. He should choose his servants carefully. He must cause dissensions among the noblemen in his enemy’s kingdom. He should be forgiving, but not excessively so, for then men of evil heart would take advantage of him. His innermost thoughts must be concealed even from his nearest ones.

To see a loved one in pain is more wrenching than to bear that pain yourself.

Even the shame that had struck like hot iron, branding revenge into my brain,