The Palace of Illusions (2008) – Chithra Banerjee Divakaruni - Book Review

    The oft cursed character Paanchali from the Mahabharata remains a mystery unsolved to this day. The uniqueness of such a character and the loopholes that the writer of the epic deliberately left out add to the problem of this mystery and mysticism. With the desires, dreams, ambition, passion, and the secret love, Banerjee in her novel, The Palace of Illusions attempts to bring to light the hidden persona of Paanchaali. Although she succeeds in this, I believe it is very limited. More than offering the story in Panchali’s point of view and disclosing her aforesaid longings and grudges, the novel for the most part staggers under the shadow of the great epic and its grandeur of intricate plot.

    However, Banerjee’s efforts at bringing to the front row the minor character like Dhai Ma, Paanchali’s sisterly affection toward Dhrishtadhyumna, the love for both Karna and Krishna are commendable. But apart from such minor efforts, the writer fails to bring a fresh perspective to the epic. I wish she read M.T Vasudevan Nair’s Radamoozham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randamoozham) (The Second Turn) or And Now Let Me Sleep
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ini_Njan_Urangatte) by P.K Balakrishnan. In these novels, despite knowing the entire plot of the epic, the perspective that the writers take from that of Bheem and Panchali, never spoil our pleasure of reading. In fact, the pleasure of reading only increases when we read these novels.

 

    The story, as detailed in the novel is moreover untouched and the celebrated ‘Draupadi perspective’ is ineffective. Nowhere except until the very end, I could sympathize with her character. In my opinion, there is little originality in the way she tried to portray Paanchaali, and if at all there is, it is inconsequential to the greater plot of the Mahabharata epic. The weakest points of the novel include Karna’s undisclosed love for Paanchali which he narrates to Bheeshma and the entire war scene which becomes nothing but farcical compared to the original. I have a feeling that if she employed the stream of consciousness technique, perhaps she could be more successful.

    I still believe that the praise and love that this novel receive is misplaced and stems from a general love of Indian Myths which we see very much in vogue these days.

 -Anjoe-