Draupadi- The Woman Unparagoned

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Draupadi: The Woman Unparagoned: Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's "Draupadi" is unhistorical but excels in all feminine virtues. She has no parallel in world literature or myths. Her journey, as the poet presents, is from Fire to Ice. She rises to unimaginable heights in majesty and also falls into unimaginable depths. She is THE WOMAN in Indian Imaginary who gets life, form and energy in this epic poem. Without deviating significantly from the original Vyasa Mahabharata Prafulla Mohanty analyses Draupadi's mind, her lonliness and intense suffering in poetry. The poem moves with rhythmic force compelling the readers admiration.

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty (b. 1939) is a prolific bilingual writer, dramatist and translator, and has served the Govt. of Odisha as Professor of English, Principal, Ravenshaw Autonomous College, and Khallikote Autonomous College. Currently, living in Bhubaneswar writing and lecturing on literature and cultural themes, he was a Member, Press Council of India from 1999 to 2001, and a Senior Fellow, Department of Culture, Government of India. His collection of essays Bharatiya Sanskruti O Bhagwadgita won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2004. He is recipient also of the Sarala Samman, Mansingh Samman, Upendra Bhanja Samman and many others.

Five years ago, I was invited by Ms Sabita Sahu, an old student of mine, to write for her blog savimuse.com. After a series of essays (Published in book form- Reality Revisited and Shifting Paradigms) I serialized Draupadi in her weekly blog.

I record here my deep gratitude to Ms Sabita Sahu for taking all pains to type out the episodes and publishing them unfailingly for 87 weeks. I thank her for her pains and committed sincerity. She is a poet in her own right and has three volumes of poems to her credit.

I record my sincere and loving thanks to my son Pradyumna, for computer viewing and printouts.

I record my appreciation for Dr. Suman Mohapatra for going through the Manuscript and suggesting changes with sound and sane comments.

Above all I thank my family and my blog followers for their encouraging comments.

Why Draupadi?

Long years ago when I read George Bernard Shaw's (GBS) Man and Superman, I was struck by one line: "The creation of Woman is the greatest blunder of Nature'. I protested. How and Why? I asked not to anyone in particular. Never to GBS, he would have accosted me with million words which I am sure, he knows are echoes from the great void. How is it that poets, sculptors, painters and musicians have been discovering the perennial beauty, form, symmetry and fragrance in diverse rhythms, pedestalling woman over all nuances of life's celebration? Why then people die, kill, conspire, revolt and do all impossible things just for an amorous glance? O Beatrice, O Helen... Ha Site, O Laila, O Juliet, crying to the world "My Universe for a kiss"? The Universe may be a sandy desert or Tolstoy's six feet of land or Bahadur Shah Jafar's Do gaz ki zameen! (Two yards of land!).

The undulations of my mind searched for a coast of assured certainty. After a long life of teaching and research I was convinced that the great GBS was just cynical, not a misogynist. Woman is Nature's loveliest creation. Woman is Nature herself in her enigmatic profundity. Alphonso, Aditi, Eve and many undiscovered Women in the creation myths of different civilizations, have created and sustained the human race. But woman is not just a body with a different sex organ, capable of reproduction. She is a separate being. She is Prakriti in the Sankhya system of philosophy who modulates the male principle in synthesizing creation and destruction to maintain the harmony of the Universe. Woman gives birth to man, balances irate tempers and romantic indulgences in the cosmological framework.

My purpose here is to present a woman who has no parallel in recorded history or creative myth making. Man's poetic imagination has created many women-angels, deities, sylphs, fairies, nymphs. We have Juno, Minerva, Columbia, Bellona, Aphrodite etc., and in India we have the divine consorts of our Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahadeva-Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati, respectively. We also have Durga, Kali, Yogamaya etc. But the three women which Indian imagination has created are relevant to our cultural life even today. These three women are Sita in the Ramayana, Draupadi in the Mahabharata and Radha appears in Jayadeva's Gita Govinda as a consort of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. All these three are three unique feminine forms of the Indian mind which have no comparable parallel in western myths.