{"id":383,"date":"2008-07-10T12:01:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shekharkapur.com\/newblog\/?p=383"},"modified":"2008-07-10T12:01:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:01:21","slug":"sonyas-picks-princess-paanchalis-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shekharkapur.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/sonyas-picks-princess-paanchalis-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonya&#8217;s Picks: Princess Paanchali&#8217;s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Mahabharat Picks\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shekharkapur.com\/blog\/archives\/mahabharatpicks.jpg\" width=\"251\" height=\"185\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Princess Paanchali&#8217;s Story<\/strong><br \/>\nIs having 5 husbands a great thing ?<br \/>\nWhat more could any woman want, you might say. Specially if the 5 husbands, between them, bring to the table, a sons-of-gods combo. Of righteousness, strength, bravery and beauty.<br \/>\nCertainly  the lot of Draupadi, husband to the 5 Pandava brothers, doesn&#8217;t seem bad ( OK OK she had to spent 13 years of her life in exile, and also get gambled away to bad cousin-in-law Duryodhana).  But then she had a whole war fought over her. All the men who abused her were killed, or the blood of their hearts drunk up.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nBut read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FYajnaseni-Story-Draupadi-Pratibha-Ray%2Fdp%2F8171673236%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215581326%26sr%3D8-1&#038;tag=musiconnet-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325\">Yajnaseni<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=musiconnet-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/> by Pratibha Ray where , the dark, fire born princess with flashing eyes, tells her own tale, and you figure out what a bad deal Draupadi really had.<br \/>\nAnd for a trendier, more colloquial version, read Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni&#8217;s &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPalace-Illusions-Chitra-Banerjee-Divakaruni%2Fdp%2F0385515995%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215581357%26sr%3D8-1&#038;tag=musiconnet-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325\">The Palace of Illusions<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=musiconnet-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>&#8216;. Mistress of Spices Divakaruni lives up to her reputation and gives us a racy and  romantic tale.<br \/>\nDivakaruni tells the story of not  just Draupadi and the god Krishna, but also of the most tragic hero in the whole wide world &#8211; Karna, the son of the Sun God. Cast off on the river as a baby, by his unmarried princess mother , and from then on doomed to tragedy.<br \/>\nAll of this make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPalace-Illusions-Chitra-Banerjee-Divakaruni%2Fdp%2F0385515995%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1215581357%26sr%3D8-1&#038;tag=musiconnet-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325\">The Palace of Illusions<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=musiconnet-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/> a zippy read . And what could be more tragic than the Draupadi Karna romance ( even if its strictly unhistorical) ?<br \/>\nTold colloquially, the Mahabharata, has a charm of its own. Never mind that  Draupadi calls brother Dristadyumna &#8216;Dhri&#8217;. Or that her nurse Dhai Ma grumbles &#8220;And my buttocks , I swear, they were flat as chapattis&#8221;.<br \/>\nAfter all, is  the  Mahabharata, as we know it, really historical ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Princess Paanchali&#8217;s Story Is having 5 husbands a great thing ? What more could any woman want, you might say. Specially if the 5 husbands, between them, bring to the table, a sons-of-gods combo. Of righteousness, strength, bravery and beauty. Certainly the lot of Draupadi, husband to the 5 Pandava brothers, doesn&#8217;t seem bad ( [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sonyas-book-reviews"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sonya&#039;s Picks: Princess Paanchali&#039;s Story - Shekhar Kapur<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shekharkapur.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/sonyas-picks-princess-paanchalis-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sonya&#039;s Picks: Princess Paanchali&#039;s Story - Shekhar Kapur\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Princess Paanchali&#8217;s Story Is having 5 husbands a great thing ? What more could any woman want, you might say. Specially if the 5 husbands, between them, bring to the table, a sons-of-gods combo. Of righteousness, strength, bravery and beauty. 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