Draupadi's Fate

She watches with rage, horror, and disarray. Everything she has fought for is compromised before her very gaze. Draupadi, from the Mahabharat, a widely known Hindu epic, is a woman who played a massive role in the War of Kurukshetra for the honor of her womanhood, watches as the world forgets history and is hence cursed with repeating it. 

Though the story of Draupadi is mythology, the parallels of her struggles in present-day society are tangible and impending. 

Though Draupadi was the queen of one of the largest kingdoms of her time, one of her husbands (she had five due to a boon from a previous life), Yudhishtir, gambled away not only their kingdom, but himself, their jewels, their wealth, even the other husbands, every single thing to their name including the clothes on their back—and Draupadi herself.  Though she was a queen, she was gambled away in a game of dice, like an object—her autonomy taken away from her because her husband saw her as his property to gamble. She was forced into an assembly of men—her husbands, their cousins who had won the gamble, and their entire extended family of royals and advisors and teachers—and one of the cousins tried to strip her of her clothes before everybody, snatching away the dignity that Yudhishtir gambled away her rights to. 

Though it sounds like an outraging tale of old, it’s a prophecy to things just as disgusting in the present that we must pay attention to. 

If we do not change our ways and alter the waves of horror in this world, we will be forced to repeat her fate and Draupadi, the dishonored queen, will watch us with disdain.