who has learnt to hide his pain. There could have been so many ways to look at
Karna but Draupadi turns herself inside out for Karna. She tells how she at first more
than admired Karna more than even the Pandavas or Duryodhana but had to insult
him in their very first interaction. Still there was a silent love that did express itself
to Draupadi but Draupadi seldom let it flow out of her face or mouth. Draupadi, after
knowing about Karnas past started pitying him and had a sense of understanding of
the fact that why Karna was the way he was. Draupadi had a very strong crush on
Karna. The episode after Karnas death magnifies this love. The visualisation of
Karnas soul that is said to encircle the battlefield and pay a visit to the crying
Draupadi confirms that Karna also acknowledged Draupadis love for him. It is my
personal belief that you avoid something only in one of the two cases- either you
hate it or you are obsessed with it but also understand that it is unachievable. With
Karna avoiding Draupadi, it was essentially the latter case.
Though the book is a successful attempt, I must mention some of the similar works
in Hindi literature that I have read. One of them is Vayam Rakshamah by Acharya
Chatursen that corners the paradigm and breaks out of it to see the evolution of
Ravana and the various factors that are involved in his character building process.
Yet another book is Main bheeshma bol raha hun by the same author. It views
Mahabharata from the point of view of Devwrat (Piataamah Bheeshma) and
critically analyses the actions taken by the various characters. One similar book is
Shivaji sawants Mrityunjay, which is the biography of Karna as viewed by Karna
himself, Kunti, Krishna, Duryodhana, Karnas wife, and Draupadi. All these books
produce more effect with respect to the necessity of bringing out the qualities of the
characters. This book Palace of Illusions, compared to the others that have been
mentioned above, nothing in terms of the effect it has on some voracious reader,
especially a reader of such taste. The reason it still catches the readers attention is
that it has a strong feminist psychology working in the background.
The author has seen the life of women in India and in U.S and may be some more
places and hence she could figure out the differences and sufferings that women
have adapted to. Her bringing up and her present life are both involved in the story
and those have contributed to the book much more than the scripts that she must
have read before writing this book. In this regard, I claim that this is an original
work of the author and is not inspired by anything else but her own understanding
of the matter. She has appropriately set the present day world into Mahabharata
and gives a silent yet bold message to the reader.
I enjoyed reading the book and I also admit that if I had read fewer books than I
actually have read, this could have been one of my Cant live without books.