With nothing to do for 3 weeks at home, I had to kill time when the star plus serials were not on! So ordered a bunch of books from Flipkart.
One of my first books was during summer holidays in school. I would visit my village which had a huge library and we would rent books every alternate day. Thankfully we have a huge house with the biggest courtyard I can think of with marigold flowers and the back yard filled with banana trees. We would spend all our time with the smell of wet red mud.
Since we had 3-4 families living there, we were a bunch of kids and I clearly remember Bharathy aunty. She was a lecturer and she was the one who would read out those huge books which would not fit into our hands. And thus came Ramayan and Mahabharat and we would read it every summer till I decided that I dont like it nor agree with most of it. I was always confused about how Mahabharata was a story of warriors. Secretly I would think why no one really stood up to anything or I was too young to understand. Every sunday we would watch it on TV on Doorsarshan and this would reinforce my thoughts about each character except of course Karna.
I am glad Chitra Banerjee wrote ‘The palace of Illusions’. I picked up this book after my flatmate recommended it to me. It really captures some of the plain feelings to the situations instead of the complicated web of hierarchy to fulfill the destined war to end an era. Even though its not the entire story and only glimpses from Draupadi’s view, it puts my confusion to rest. All in all, what were the five brothers thinking!!!
Would throughly recommend it if you are not emotionally attached to the epic called Mahabharath.
