A Moment of Reflection

4 hours ago

Anushkaa

@nushhkiee

The night was dark, yet the world felt illuminated with an inner tumult I could not escape. My thoughts whirled like the wind ... sharply biting, relentlessly searching. This was the night I had been dreading, the night I had long feared would come but never believed it would.

I sat alone in my chambers, the flickering flame of the oil lamp casting long, wavering shadows on the walls. The air around me was thick, heavy with the scent of incense and sorrow. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the river, its waters murmuring as though speaking of ancient secrets...secrets that I, too, was bound to now, whether I wished for them or not.

My name is Draupadi, born of fire, born of vengeance, born of a thousand untold stories. They speak of me in many ways...some call me a princess, others a queen, some even a goddess. But who am I really? To my husbands, I am the embodiment of both love and torment, of strength and weakness. To my enemies, I am the very face of their downfall. And to myself… I am simply a woman who was torn from the fabric of her destiny and forced to weave her own path through fire.

This is the night I lost my honor. This is the night the last thread of my dignity was pulled away from me.

I remember the day I was born...how my father, King Draupad, had prayed fervently to the gods, desiring a son to avenge his defeat at the hands of Drona. Instead, the earth had given me to him, a girl from the flames of a sacrificial fire. My very birth was a mark of defiance, an omen of the battles yet to come.

But from the moment I opened my eyes, I was not given the choice to be just a woman. No. I was given the mantle of a destiny that seemed too heavy to bear, and yet, no one else was fit to carry it. So I bore it.

The day of my swayamvara...a day that should have been a celebration of my freedom, a moment to choose a husband based on my will...ended not in joy but in fate's cruel jest. It was not love that bound me to my five husbands, but duty, destiny, and a strange, unspoken loyalty that grew in the ashes of my heart. Arjuna, my first love, had won me. But fate, in its twisted sense of humor, did not allow me the luxury of living only for one.

In the years that followed, I was the queen of many palaces, a wife of many men. But I was never allowed to be a queen in the true sense of the word. My heart was never at rest, for it was always in a state of war. I have lived my life not as a woman of privilege, but as a warrior in her own right, never granted the peace of being just a wife or mother. Even when I laughed, I did not laugh freely. Even when I wept, my tears were heavy with the weight of a thousand lives, a thousand choices, and a thousand wrongs.

And then came the game of dice.

The day I lost everything.

I should have known the game was rigged from the start. It was not fate that guided the dice that day...it was the ambition of Duryodhana, the jealousy of Shakuni, and the weakness of my husbands, who, despite their valor on the battlefield, had proven to be mere shadows of men when faced with the seduction of a game they could never win.

The court was silent as I stood before them, my body frozen in disbelief. How had this happened? How had I allowed myself to be drawn into this web of deceit? I had thought the game a mere jest, a show of strength for the men, a way for them to prove their dominance. But when Yudhishthira, my husband, my king, placed our kingdom, our wealth, our dignity on the table, I saw the first glimmer of what would come.

I did not fear for the wealth or the land, for I had never been attached to such things. But when the game continued, and my husbands continued to gamble away their honor, my heart began to sink. And when it came to my turn - the moment when they called me to the court, where I had no choice but to walk across the floor with my head held high, though every part of me was screaming to run....I knew it was no longer a game.

In that moment, I was not just the wife of the Pandavas. I was not just a woman caught in a web of male pride and ambition. No, in that moment, I was the embodiment of all that was wrong with this world. I was the pawn, the offering, the victim of a fate far crueler than I had ever imagined. And as they dragged me to the court, my hands bound, my hair disheveled, I saw the world differently. I saw the way men played with the lives of women as though they were pieces on a chessboard, to be moved and discarded at will. My heart bled for the helplessness of every woman, every daughter, every mother who had been subjected to such a fate.

But I was not helpless. No, not I. I stood there in the court of Hastinapura, and I felt my dignity, my very soul, rise within me. I was no longer just Draupadi, the woman who had been born of fire. I was Draupadi, the fire itself. The flame that could not be extinguished, even in the darkest of nights.

And yet, when Dushasana approached me, when he dared to lay his hands on me, to strip me of my garments in front of those men who swore oaths of brotherhood, I knew then that my anger would be my salvation. My pain would be my strength. I would not cry, not in the way they expected me to. No, I would not give them that victory.

I called out to the one who had always been my silent witness, to the one who had heard every prayer, every cry, every whisper of my heart: Krishna.

And in that moment, I felt his presence. His divine grace descended upon me, and I knew that I was not alone. He who had been with me in every battle, in every moment of doubt and despair, was now with me in my darkest hour. The sari that Dushasana attempted to pull from me stretched, lengthened, and multiplied...an unbreakable force, a protection woven by divine hands. I stood before them, my dignity intact, my honor preserved. My body, though violated in their eyes, was a vessel of strength, of divine will.

And so, I stood - defiant, unbroken, unyielding.

But what of my husbands? What of the ones who had sworn to protect me, to stand by my side? Where were they when I needed them? Where were they when I was humiliated, when I was brought to the very edge of my own soul’s despair? It was not their honor that was at stake; it was mine. And yet, not one of them moved. Not one of them spoke.

I have often asked myself why I did not leave them then. Why did I not walk away from this life of endless suffering and humiliation? But the answer, I know now, lies not in love or devotion, but in duty. In a strange, inexplicable duty to them...to my husbands, to the world, and to my very soul. It was not I who had chosen this fate; it was fate that had chosen me. And so I endured, not for their sake, but for mine...for the fire that burned inside me, the fire that would never be extinguished.

As I look back upon that night, upon that moment, I realize something that no one else ever will. It was not the loss of my garments, not the insult to my body, that truly broke me. It was the realization that I had become a symbol of something far greater than myself. A symbol of every woman who had ever suffered in silence, every woman who had ever been objectified, humiliated, and discarded. My loss was not just mine...it was the loss of every woman who had ever been a pawn in the game of men.

And yet, here I am, still standing, still alive, still burning with a fire that will never die.

For I am Draupadi. And I will not be forgotten.