So I just finished Palace of Illusions

[conuly]

which is a take on the Mahābhārata from Draupadi's point of view. I don't know what I missed from not being familiar with the original, but from reading this and skimming Wikipedia I feel like you can sum up the entire story with the phrase "toxic masculinity". If those men would just get the hell over themselves and their inflated and, frankly, vainglorious sense of their own "honor", that story would be a lot shorter and hardly anybody would have died.

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Comments

[pipilj]

Mahabharat is a beautiful epic and is much more complicated than Ramyan another Indian epic. The war was faught over rights to the kingdom which was supposed to be returned after the exile was over. Draupadi attempted disrobing has many legends around it. Her husband Yudishtir had no business putting his brothers and wife as pawns in Pachisi (game of dice). I enjoyed the Palace of illusion quite a lot it was interesting to read the epic from Draupadi point of view

[siderea]

Yeah, I was gonna say: the original Mahābhārata was already notably from Draupadi's point of view in at least the case of the story of the magical sari, and her telling off her husband Udishtira for presuming she was his property to gamble.

ETA: Also, just checking: has everyone in this discussion already seen "Sita Sings the Blues"?

[goss]

"Sita Sings the Blues"

Oh yeah, that was pretty awesome! <3

[greghousesgf]

I absolutely love Sita Sings the Blues!

[conuly]

ETA: Also, just checking: has everyone in this discussion already seen "Sita Sings the Blues"?

Not even a tiny bit but it's on my to do list now! Right after everything else I gotta do. At least tomorrow I mostly have the day off because apparently full battery testing is an all day thing.

[larryhammer]

If those men would just get the hell over themselves and their inflated and, frankly, vainglorious sense of their own "honor", that story would be a lot shorter and hardly anybody would have died.

That describes almost every epic in the world.

[conuly]

Almost?

[larryhammer]

Just in case there's a religious epic where that doesn't apply.

(I mean, The Divine Comedy and Rumi's (ETA) Big Long Poem Masnavi might not count as epics, but they are definitely trying for the same generic space -- and while they are all about a protagonist getting over themselves, the "honor" hangup doesn't apply there.)

[maureenlycaon_dw]

Agreed. It was my first impression upon reading the Iliad.

[movingfinger]

Tangentially, if you have not watched the film of Peter Brooks Mahabharata, I think you would enjoy it a lot. It is available on DVD and the library should be able to ILL it for you.

[conuly]

I'll see, thanks.

[goss]

You probably know this already, but just in case...

Mahābhārata

While the surface-level, face-value narrative can be appreciated just fine, the Mahabharata, and especially the verses of the Bhagvad Gita held within, are really meant to be an exploration of the internal battle/struggle within us all, not so much one set of dudes fighting another set of dudes.

But definitely cool that the plot itself is being explored and told from a different perspective. :)

[conuly]

Yeah, well, they could've struggled within themselves with a lot less collateral damage if they hadn't all been infected with toxic masculinity like whoa.

[greghousesgf]

first, I want to thank you in general for posting links to interesting articles.
I loved that the queerness in kids' books article mentioned three books I liked a lot as a kid, Charlotte's Web, Harriet the Spy and the Secret Language.

[wpadmirer]

I love your summary.