“The Mahabharata emerged as a process of retelling. It started out with the Jaya, some 20-25 thousand verses long. Then it morphed into Bharat with 50 thousand verses, and finally became the Mahabharata, which is 100,000 verses long,” points out Ashwin Sanghi.
Mallika Sarabhai is drawn to ‘Psychologies of characters and constant doubts and ambiguities of how to take a situation further.’ She says that these are things that we all live with, all the time. In one way or other, we face the same dilemmas that the characters in the Mahabharata face, and that is why it always makes for a great retelling.
As an activist, Sarabhai tries to bring forth women’s voices and Draupadi’s character helps her do that. She says Draupadi is a feisty woman, who couldn’t be flattened out by male pundits, historians and male sages.“I saw the effect that just one character that I was playing, had on women across the world,” she reminisces, “From women at the Sorbonne in France and aboriginal women in Australia to Big Mamas in Harlem, this interpretation of Draupadi seems to strike a chord.”
Sarabhai portrayed Draupadi in Peter Brook’s nine-hour stage play in 1985 and toured across the world with its cast. She was the only one in the troupe, who didn’t know French, so she thought if she forgot her lines, she will improvise in Sanskrit, ‘so that at least it would sound authentic,’ Sarabhai says.
She recalls that two young French girls told her “Madame Draupadi! We are not feminists and we don’t believe in feminism, but that’s the kind of woman we would want to be.” Draupadi questions power, she questions what is good and evil. These very definitions need to be questioned as also the patriarchal way of dismissing anything done by women as weak and alternative,” says Sarabhai discussing other strong women from the Mahabharata, who are not allowed to voice their opinion.
“For instance Satyawati — how did she straddle three generations of a family and allowed the Mahabharata? What were Gandhari’s feelings; how is it that she is not a bitter woman? Every day is a battle of Mahabharata-proportions; people take on shades of one or the other; it’s a question of degree and not about black or white,” elaborates Sarabhai, explaining how the Mahabharata plays out in our daily lives.
“We all love stories of good versus evil; stories of victory of the righteous; we all love the underdog and the Pandavas were, in that sense, underdogs. So it’s good old-fashioned masala fiction,” adds Sanghi.