The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

He held out his arms—but for my brother alone. It was only my brother he meant to raise up to show to his people. Only my brother that he wanted.

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

He called me by a special name, the female form of his own: Krishnaa. It had two meanings: the dark one, or the one whose attraction can't be resisted.

Kings always take other wives. And men always break the promises they make before marriage.

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.”

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

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.”

“As for being pawns,” Krishna was saying, “aren't we all pawns in the hands of Time, the greatest player of them all?”

She struck her stomach again and again until she bled, and bleeding, gave birth to a huge, unformed ball of flesh.

“Ah, forgiveness,” Dhri said. “It's a virtue that eludes even the great. Isn't our own existence a proof of that?”

Each painful detail of Karna's story became a hook in my flesh, binding me to him, making me wish a happier life for him.)

Savor this moment of power, I told myself. It may be your only one.

And when the time came for him to repay the haughty princess of Panchaal, he did so a hundredfold.

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

we grow to become that which we live within.

As for the sin of killing them, I swear it will not touch you. I take it all on myself. For the safety of my children, I'll gladly forgo heaven.”

(In this assumption I was wrong. One of them had already begun to fall in love with me. Later he would tell me, I thought my chest would burst from the effort of holding in my angry words. If it had gone any further, I would have stood against my brother for your sake, even if it made me traitor to my clan.

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

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.

Truly it was a transient world we lived in. Yesterday in a palace, today on the road, tomorrow—who knew? Perhaps I would find the home that had eluded me all my life.

Sometimes when he didn't know I was watching, there was a starkness on his face, the look of a man who was consumed by jealousy and hated himself for it.

And now I saw what in my distraction I'd missed earlier: he loved me. I found the knowledge oddly painful.

In order for a victory to occur, someone had to lose. For one person to gain his desire, many had to give up theirs.

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 will not comb it,” I said, “until the day I bathe it in Kaurava blood.”

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.

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

As for my own children, I found myself awkward and tongue-tied with them. I tried to find words to tell them I loved them, that I was sorry destiny had separated us in this way. But already they were strangers, cool and distant when they weren't sulking because they'd been dragged away from courtly amusements.

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

Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.

“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?”

Because ultimately only the witness—and not the actors— knows the truth.”

The twelve years she was in the forest, I, too, slept on the ground, thinking of her discomfort.

Perhaps that is the miracle of stories. They make us realize that we're not alone in our folly and our suffering.

I was struck, suddenly, by how brief that life was compared to everything around me: the marble buildings, the flowering flame-blossom trees, the cobblestones smoothed by generations of feet, the indigo haze of the distant mountains.

There was an unexpected freedom in finding out that one wasn't as important as one had always assumed!