What I've been reading

I've been doing a lot of good reading since this year began. Henning Mankell was one such new discovery. I'm also enjoying India by Patrick French and Jaya, an illustrated retelling of the Mahabharata by Devdutt Pattanaik. For my bookclub, I read The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal. A had very mixed feelings about it and I typically have similar reactions so I began it hesitantly, but soon found myself drawn in by the story, the characters and the writing. The way that the author wrote about the stage of a relationship where one partner has lost interest but still cares for the other, and wants the other person to read their mind so they don't have to do the bad job of actually breaking up was beautifully and poignantly described. The story of the American woman was intriguing, and overall the quality of the writing was beautiful. I have to confess I skipped several passages of purple prose but I loved reading the book, and I loved the conclusions about the nature of desire and relationships.

I read Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser. He is someone who has always fascinated me, because we know such superficial things about him, like his long reign and the Sun King who built Versailles. The book brought him alive as a person, the many women he loved, his attitude towards the duties of kings, the fact that he was deeply religious, the reasons behind the pomp and splendour, his strategising in terms of foreign policy and much more.

I also read Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, and found it a compelling and revealing read, despite the fact that I have read several books about her and am quite well-versed with her story. The book brought home the fact that she was much more sinned against than sinning; even that famously fatuous 'let them eat cake' remark attributed to her had also been attributed to Louis XIV's mother a hundred years before. She was neglected in terms of upbringing and education by her ambitious mother, and taught conflicting things. on the one hand, her mother wanted her to be a true 'daughter of France' after marriage, on the other, she wanted marie Antoinette to influence French policy in a way beneficial for Austria. With an unhappy marriage to a boorish, suspicious, sullen and self-conscious husband who didn't consummate the marriage for 7.5 years, in an age when princesses were only valued or their ability to give the country royal heirs, she turned to all kinds of amusements, from the Trianon to Opera and gambling.

The famous extravagance that is cited against her was a royal habit, with none of the French royals ever sticking to their allowances. Her chief desire was to be a good wife and especially a good mother but the ceremoniousness of the French court at Versailles prevented even that. In the end, after her husband's vacillation had caused their escape efforts to come to nothing, after his execution, her infant son (8) was forced to turn against her and accuse her of all kinds of indecent behaviour so she could be found guilty and executed. The book brilliantly brings all this to light, and her to life as a character. I found myself in tears by the end of it.

Another series that I am reading and enjoying tremendously is the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. Set in Edinburgh, the books bring the city vibrantly to life with its contrasts of a rich cultural city life and the boon of amazing views and countryside within easy reach. The key character is a 40-ish female philosopher who thinks deeply about everyday decisions and leads a reflective life, even while she hooks up with a boyfriend 15 years younger, who also happens to be her niece's ex-boyfriend, and has a baby at over 40.

I love the way that McCall Smith shows such deep insight into the female mind, and it's a suspension of disbelief to realise it's a he who wrote the books. The books have an investigative problem at the heart, though nothing as gruesome as violent crime, and their resolution is always rooted in philosophy, the simple art of courtesy which seems to be disappearing from modern life, and John Donne's famous poem, 'Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee'.

Jaipur Litfest

We had been hearing about JLF for the past 6 years, and it always sounded interesting, but somehow not like something we could do. Partly, we thought it'd be one of those fearfully intellectual events that always numb my brain. I guess somewhere we were also busy having babies 2 and 3 and bringing up baby # 1, and working…all that jazz that one uses as reasons and then when you stop using those excuses and decide to go, you wondered why you didn't go earlier. So sometime last year, the idea of planning to go to Litfest germinated, and finally during the IIMC reunion, my BFF/ soulsis and another dear friend said they would both go this year. Another dear friend has been going to JLF the past two years, so it seemed like a no-brainer – literature in the company of good friends. A unfortunately was stuck holding the fort/ kids as my parents were out of town, though I have told him we have to plan so we can both go together next year.

I couldn't stay for 5 whole days, so we went from Friday to Sunday evening…and it was blissful. From the very first event, where Dr. Karan Singh and Stephen Pollock spoke about the need to preserve Indian culture and literature through creating avenues where people could access and enjoy it, to further sessions, where you sat on dusty floors, cheek by jowl with David Godwin or Vikram Seth, or had a brush with greatness ( Coetzee brushed past me on his walk to the stage ), or made a blithering idiot of yourself in front of Javed Akhtar, it was such a joyous celebration of the power of literature, to move a diverse set of people, both physically, since everyone had travelled some distance to be there, and emotionally. What made it special was the diversity of the writers, and the fact that most of us growing up in the India of the '70s and '80s could never have imagined them traveling to India and speaking to a crowd of us, rather than going off on intensely guarded private holidays. I was also immensely pleased with the democratic nature of the festival – attendance is free, and there's no special seating for anyone apart from the speakers. Even the organizers, if not in action at a particular event, have to find squatting space wherever they can, there's none of that obsequiousness and obligatory bows to the famous/ notorious (i.e. politicians) and 'people in power' that marks a typical Indian event of any kind.

Some of my takeaways:

Javed Akhtar speaking as eloquently as only he can about the Urdu Zubaan and how the two-nation theory has given it a religious context due to which it is dying. How Urdu was never the language spoken by Mughals, and actually was spoken by the common people, more Hindus than Muslims. He spoke a simple sentence in daily-speak Hindi which he then broke down etymologically into Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Sanskrit and a few other languages. And he mentioned that Akbar in fact was born in Multan and never travelled outside of India, so how could one call him a foreigner. And that Akbar actually spoke Punjabi and a couple of other languages but not Urdu/ Persian. I came away with this mental image of a short, portly Akbar, wearing a white lungi and safa, which apparently was his preferred mode of dressing, calling out to Salim of Dilip Kumar/ Devdas vintage in the popular imagination, "Oh Salim! Itthe aa. Us laundi wich ki karr riya 'ai?"

Rita Chaudhury's book Makaam. She is an Assamese novelist and her novel is based on a real and shameful incident in India's modern history. Many Chinese people had migrated to India after Communists took over China, and some of them had settled in Assam, married the locals and thought of themselves as Indians of Chinese origin. Suddenly in 1962, on the penultimate day of the Indo-Chinese War, the Indian Government rounded them all up from this village, Makaam in Assam, and transported them in subhuman conditions to Rajasthan. The Government had decided that all Chinese were spies, but they had no way of telling in this group who was of Chinese origin and who was not, so they picked the ones they thought were the most Chinese looking ( how's that for racism?), and shipped them off to China. Husbands and wives were torn apart, siblings, parents and children were all rendered bereft. When those left in Rajasthan went back to Assam, they found that al their hard-earned property had been sequestered by the State as 'enemy property'. The people shipped off to China had no family, no money, no contacts there, many didn't even know the language, they spoke only Assamese. Some were even of purely Indian origin. Their life plans of becoming doctors or engineers, marriage and children were all put on hold as they struggled to survive. Even today, they live scattered all over the globe including mainland China and Hongkong, speak Assamese and remember the old days with fondness. But they still carry the fear they felt then and are scared to come back. Rita Chaudhury went and met many of them and their video-taped interviews had me in tears. They sing old Hindi songs from the 50s and 60s, have cultural festivals where they all sing and dance to Indian songs and yet carry these scars and fears deep within. Rita Chaudhury read out one passage from her book translated into English, and it was beautifully written. I am just waiting for the English version to come out.

Orhan Pamuk was merciless in dismissing his interviewers, on-stage and off, pithily asking them to keep their questions short. He was also extremely funny, especially when asked at length by an elderly gentleman, as to whether philosophical love was better or physical love. His brief response: "I can't resist saying this – that depends on the depth of penetration!"

A 6-member panel moderated by Barkha Dutt on the AfPak issue. The one Afghanistani represented on the panel, Atif, lives in France, and had a translator as he said his English was very poor. When asked about the Afghanistan issue, he replied, "It makes me laugh when people talk about this, because always, when it comes to Afghanistan, everyone else decides what is to be done, Afghanistanis never get to decide." Barkha underlined his point when, for the rest of the discussion, she never gave the gentleman the floor. Later that day, I happened to catch the tail-end of a session with him, in which he was speaking eloquently and fluently in English, so I guess he gave Barkha hers, in spades!

A session on Gaata Rahe Mera Dil by Javed Akhtar, Gulzar and Prasoon Joshi was packed to the rafters – it was very hard for the speakers to get in. In fact, the organizers had to organize a second session of the same at a larger venue, and even that was packed out. The three of them discussed what's happening to the songs in Indian cinema. Javed felt that it seemed as if filmmakers in India had become ashamed of our Indian idiom of including songs in the movies, so they were turning to movies without songs, to impress the West, whereas the whole world loves our colourful and melodious cinema. Another point made by all three was that there seemed to be a 'jhijak' or shrinking away from deeper emotions in today's songs, so there were no soulful sad songs or songs of yearning, lullabies. A crudity was creeping into the language and the stories told. Earlier, producers used to have a wholesome fear of the 'public' and hesitated to do anything they feared would offend the public, but today the new God was youth, and everyone followed what they thought youth would lap up. A young girl in the audience made a thoughtful comment about how youth loved the wholesome and thought-provoking lyrics of Taare Zameen Par and Rang de basanti etc, so it was more a matter of a lack of better choice available to them than that their standards had fallen.

A wonderful debate on Why Books Matter – how they help take us out of our own setting and miniscule problems which nevertheless loom large, and place us in a different context. One elderly gentleman in the audience deplored the poor reading tastes of the modern-day public, where cookbooks and film-books sold more copies than literary works. Javed Akhtar, also in the audience, was called in as an ad-hoc member of the panel and he replied in his inclusivist style that he was not a puritan or a purist and he would be the last to advocate that the public read only literary masterpieces, but that they should read everything. In the same vein, the previous day, he had said that he loved songs like Beedi Jalaile or Munni Badnaam. His only issue was that they should have all types of songs, not just 'item songs'. (Are you getting the feeling I have fallen in love with Javed Akhtar? I certainly am!)

A session on 1857, which was supposed to feature William Dalymple and Mahmood Farrouqui had an added bonus of Mrinal Pande. She has recently translated a Marathi first-person account of 1857 from the Hindi to English, and it was hot off the presses. The story is fascinating – a couple of Marathi Brahmin priests decide to do a pilgrimage and set off for the holy places in the north just before the stirring events of that year. Somehow, each place they wind up in is a hotbed of insurgency/ rebellion against the British – they land in Gwalior and report on Scindia, in Kanpur where Nana Sahib has to decide what to do with a party of English women and children trying to find their way to safe territory, in Jhansi, where they find that Lakshmibai is incensed with the Company usurping regal powers and fights back…After safely making their way back, one of the Brahmins wrote down a record of the events, with instructions that it be published after his death. He dies in 1904, and two versions of the book came out in 1907 from different publishers, so that in case the British confiscated the work of one, the other would at least survive. It sounds like a fascinating story, and Mrinal Pande narrated it like a grandmother telling her grandchildren a bedtime story, with humour and affection. Again, a book I am dying to get my hands on.

cross-posted at We are like this only

The Immortals of Meluha

Sounded like a very interesting concept so the book club picked this as the last book to read. And the book did live to sme of its promise in terms of the various concepts the author has come up with, or even the basic premise that Shiva was a tribal who then became a God...

However, we all felt that the execution was weak, particularly the writing itself which sometimes was pedestrian and sometimes trying too hard. The descriptions were rich and evocative though, and one could almost imagine it being made into a movie...

The next book up for discussion is The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall...

Nine Lives/ Songs of Blood and Sword

The Nine Lives discussion is getting documented after hazaar time, so please do forgive my somewhat hazy recollections. As I remember, some of us loved the book - Rachna, Rohit and Munna in particular. We found some of the stories absolutely fascinating, and it was interesting given that we live in such materialistic times to observe the lives of those who seem to live completely spiritual ones. Munna felt that it was a wonderful glimpse of the kind of people that we otherwise would never meet.

However, Bhavna and I, admittedly having read only a couple of the lives, found the book depressing on the whole. Possibly the choice of the first story, the Jain nun, was what lead us to that conclusion. It seemed like the Jain nun hadn't really imbibed the philosophy she stood for, since that is all about detachment from everyday emotions/ other people and yet the nun was so attached to her recently dead traveling companion that she was in deep mourning. If the whole point of her having given up a 'normal' life to follow Jainism was for her to learn these spiritual lessons and after years of leading that life she was still prey to the same emotions...well, let's just say that if finances had permitted, I would have been making a beeline to the nearest mall after reading her story!

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Songs of Blood and Sword:

We began by saying that a better editor and in fact a better writer would have made even more of this book than it already is. Certainly, the way the book began was a lame opening to a cracker of a book that kept one hooked throughout. Honestly, if we were not from the subcontinent, we would have suspected Mario Puzo of having ghost-written the book.

Fatima Bhutto makes it very clear that she is antagonistic to her aunt Benazir from page one, and by the end of the book, she certainly had all of us convinced as to why that was, and we also started viewing Benazir through her eyes. While fatima Bhutto's adoring, subjective view of her father blurs out some of the rougher edges of his personality or doings, it still seems like he at least had some definite principles, whatever the means he may have adopted to fight for them.

The Bhuttos are a very interesting family - rich, landed, powerful...in some ways reminiscent of the Gandhi-Nehru family or the Kennedys. Despite their education at liberal institutions like Oxford and Harvard, feudalism seems to run in their veins and colour their worldview, their every action. From Zulfikar down to the latest generation, eventually their lives become about the power struggle, and it is both repellant and fascinating to read about how the hunger for power changes relationships and characters.

Eventually, we became even more fascinated by the thought that despite having a class of politicians that is no better than those in Pakistan, somehow India has managed to remain saner, and is not a failure as a state. Despite Indira Gandhi's best efforts during the Emergency, our institutions have remained, and thus preserved us as a democratic country, and a free one. We debated the various reasons why that was so - Hindu philosophy, the diversity, Nehru setting the tone, the army that never wants to take over the state...Obviously it wasn't a definitive discussion, but after reading the book, we all collectively said, "There, but for the grace of God..."

We also thought Fatima was one ballsy woman to continue living in Karachi after what happened to her father, and especially after writing this book!

The book is highly recommended for anyone from India/ Pakistan...

Silent Raga - a mystery/ suspense novel

This is a book that has more questions than answers, and thus remained a mystery/ suspense to most of us.

Why was the book named Silent Raga? What was the connection between the musical notes announcing each chapter and the goings-on of the chapter? Why did Janaki run away to Asgar whom she had just met once? Why did Asgar agree to marry her having met her just once, when nowhere is it indicated that she is either a divine beauty or a divine veena player, leaving his paralysed first wife? Why did said paralysed first wife make so nice to second wife, i.e. Janaki, including playing chief advice-giver/ baby sitter? What was the relevance of Janaki's veena/ music center to the story? What was the relevance of the interview Janaki gave to the 'bob-cut' haired journalist? Why did Janaki buy the childhood home in which she never had a single positive experience? What was the relevance of Miss Nalini's friend's suicide to Kamala's suicide? Why did Mallika never evolve/ grow a spine? Why did Mallika always take Chitti with her to the hospital if she hated her so much? What was the relevance of the riots the day Mallika went to visit her father? What was the point of the American boss driving Mallika home that day? What was the point of the party at Mallika's colleague's home? Why did Mallika not express anything to her sister whom she'd been carrying a grudge against for so many years? What was the relevance of them driving past Sriperumbudur the day of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, given that the assassination is barely a footnote? Why did the father go mad ( maybe because he was in this book?)

Why did we have to know in such excruciating detail what the chai walla was wearing? Why ten pages about jattis and 'rivulets of womanhood'? Why don't we see any explanations for what most of the characters did? Why don't we see any resolution in the end of anything? Why is the ending such a damp squib? Why didn't the book have an editor who cut out the pretentious over-writing? How did the guy manage to peddle this book to a publisher (maybe the Indian exotic/ intricate culture thing?)

Overall the book club gave this book a rating of 2.5-4 on 10 (those who managed to read it). We liked the details of agraharam life, but felt it would have been better reserved for a scholarly treatise on life amidst Tam-brahms. Then, of course, Savvy who is a Tam-Brahm arrived and said she read the first two pages and they didn't strike her as authentic so she postponed reading the rest of it. Regarding the lack of resolution - someone suggested it may be there's a sequel in store. Well, guess which book club will not be queuing up to buy that one!

Book resolution

After I told myself I wouldn't make any resolutions this year, here I am again. Que sera sera and all that. My book resolutions...well, A and I made one towards the last quarter of last year that we'd be a little more stingy about buying books. In fact we went on a book diet, and only bought books for book club reading in the last 3 months, as a disciplinary and cost cutting measure. let's face it, it was also because our library is already overflowing with books and we don't know where to store them.

Anyway, my new resolution is to blog about every single book I read, even if it's just a couple of sentences. So here goes...

In December I read...

The Millennium Trilogy by Steig Larsson

Raiders from the North: Empire of the Moghuls by Alex Rutherford (juhu book club)

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (delhi book club)

The Silent Raga by Ameen Merchant (delhi book club)

Cary Grant, A biography, by Marc Eliot

Ava Gardner, Love is nothing, by Lee Server

2 States - the story of my marriage, by Chetan Bhagat

That's a pretty short list, by my usual standards so I'm going to cop out by saying that the Millennium trilogy was a pretty thick set of three, not to mention my crazy schedule in December. I also started reading The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende but haven't finished yet.

When I began the Millennium trilogy, I have to admit that I wasn't all that impressed with the Girl with the dragon tattoo. I read murder mysteries on a regular basis so apart from the somewhat dysfunctional or at the least unconventional lives that the characters lead, the 'surprise' ending didn't really surprise me. But I was intrigued by Liz Salander. The Girl who played with fire, on the other hand, just reeled me in from the very first word. I just gulped it down, so engrossed was I in Liz Salander's past and in wondering what would happen to Michael Blomkvist and her. The third book continued the magnificent obsession and I spent sleepless nights submerged in their world of icy Swedish fields and hospitals, police conspiracies and internal politics. I thought as a series it was superbly written and the characters became more and more...well, I can't say likeable because sometimes you can't identify with their emotions or what they are doing, but people that you cared about and wanted to succeed and emerge with victory at the end. It sounds more than a little shallow to say you're sorry the author died and there can't be any more books in the series, but I am that shallow and greedy.

What's interesting is that in typical murder mysteries, say by Mary Higgins Clark and the like, the heroine is always someone who subscribes to middle or upper class values - she usually hetero, for one thing, she's attractive, dresses well thought not necessarily expensively, has a regular job and then unwittingly gets drawn into a world of chaos and evil, and in love with or falling in love with someone and finding resolution to that in the book. In Liz, we have a character who lives by her own rules, dresses punkily most of the time, is bisexual and casual about sex, falls in and out of love with Blomkvist, seems to not care about what happens to herself, doesn't trust the system and yet emerges as a character for whom you have such sympathy. Not just because of what happened to her, but because of her feisty take-no-prisoners attitude, for pure spunk, for her independence, for her cheek...even when she goes outside the law you feel like cheering her on.

I had been meaning to read Raiders of the North, having bought it in October, but had been lazy about it till it came up as the required reading for the Juhu Book Club. I've always wished someone would take up the cause of Indian history and bring periods of it to life like Jean Plaidy has done for British and French history, so I was quite excited about this one. Overall, I was disappointed by the quality of writing. It was extremely functional and pedestrian, and just didn't live upto the richness of subject matter. I got a better idea of what his life was like, his ambitions and all that but I didn't end up identifying with him and feeling with him through his triumphs and defeats. I wonder if the Genghis Khan book by Conn Iggulden is better - I have been eyeing that for a while.

The Palace of Illusions I already blogged about and I'm going to save The Silent Raga for after the book club meeting this month. So on to the biographies. I learnt a lot I didn't know about Cary Grant who would be on my list of 5 if he weren't dead. I've always loved his screen persona and it was fascinating to go behind that and learn more about him. Interestingly, he was one of the first stars to go idnependent of the studio system in Hollywood, apart from United Artists, and that's why he never won a single Academy award, except for Lifetime achievement which he won when Gregory Peck headed the panel and insisted on it. All the powerful producers of the day apparently resented him for striking out on his own so he could get a better deal for himself. He had quite a turbulent life, from a mother who was committed to a sanatorium by his father so he could get married to someone else, to being bisexual, having a strong of marriages and constantly needing to fall in love with the heroine of the latest film he was starring in. It's sad to think that someone who was that famous and that attractive constantly needed reassurance as to his own worth.

Ava Gardner's story was also an interesting one. I've never watched too many films of hers and so didn't really know too much about her. It came as a surprise to me to learn that she was once married to Frank Sinatra. She was another classic Hollywood story - a girl from a really poor family who was discovered and then became a superstar in Hollywood but also a victim of both the studio system which in those days gave all the power to the producers - moguls like Louis B Mayer - and of the Hollywood lifestyle. Too many men, too much hurt, too many nasty surprises, too many questions about self worth...eventually, the siren who was a phenomenon world over lived and died alone in London, apart from a loyal maid and her pet dog. It was sad reading about her but also interesting to read about Hollywood's heydays, which is one of my areas of curiosity.

2 States was a book I bought and read while Bojjandi was in hospital, and I have to tell you that even under those horrendous circumstances, there were passages which made me laugh. The north-south divide is something I've lived with all my life, being a South Indian brahmin born and brought up in Delhi. First of all, hardly anyone can place me as a Southie, since I don't sport the stereotypical dark complexion, singsong Hindi accent and oiled hair. My husband is a Northie, so I have had to fend off irritating comments from his uncle about 'idli-vada-sambar khaati ho' to his family friends wondering when I was going to start eating meat. Some of my rellies on the other hand were worried about the 4 marriages funda, since A is Muslim, and one of them said I'd have to wash the sacrificial goat every Id. Well, we've never owned a goat, and I think with three kids A has his hands and bank account full, so that's that.

Some of the scenes were classic ones out of my own experience, though my parents don't live the stereotypical Southie life. I remember way back when a new South Indian family had moved into the government colony where we lived and mom sent me over to say hello and ask if they needde anything. I stepped in and it was like I'd gone through a time/ geography machine. The room - same size as our drawing room - was bare, save for 4-5 of those folding-type steel chairs, made expressly for the purpose of causing maximum discomfort to the sitter. The light fixtures were naked of shades, and 20 watt bulbs, at max, were dangling from the wires. There was also a straw chaape or mat rolled up in one corner. Pictures of Gods and Goddesses lined the walls. It looked like a room transplanted straight out of Basavanagudi or Mylapore, and the only things missing were the red oxide flooring and the pastel pink, blue or green walls. It didn't take long for me to run out silently screaming to myself and vowing never to return. I thought this bok was a fun look at the stereotypes that operate and the ones that are true too. I'd recommend the book to anyone from a mixed-up marriage.

This month, I've been reading lots of Asterix and Blake-Mortimer comics. I have also been reading some Danielle Steel books and rediscovering them. I just finished one called Bittersweet, in which a woman gets married to her sweetheart, gives up her career when they have kids and move to the suburbs and about 14 years down the line, finds herself missing a piece of her own identity. What shocks her is that her husband never once realises that she has made a sacrifice in giving up her career and never gives her points for it, and then the book moves on to a slightly more predictable love story. But I found the central theme very resonant.

I'm planning to read a book called When it's raining in Brazil, buy Starbucks, hoping to rev up my investing skills. I also have on my list Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty. And I still gotta finish Isabel Allende's book. But one thing that cropped up on my reading list last night after watching an episode of The Cosby Show, was the plays of Shakespeare. A weird thing happened to me a few years ago. I was flipping through my copy of The Complete works of Shakespeare, and all of a sudden, the prose was as clear to me as if it had been written in contemporary language by a contemporary author. I figure while the going is good, let me enjoy this serendipitous gift!

The Palace of Illusions...

...was our book selection for December. Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, it's the Mahabharata told from the perspective of Draupadi, and therefore quite different to other retellings of the epic which typically focus more on the sequence of events than any one character's motivations.

The book provoked a wonderfully rich discussion. While suggesting it, I had thought that since most of us have grown up with this story, reading a fresh perspective on it would be interesting. At the discussion we found that some people had never really gotten into it and this book wa stheir first detailed look at it, while others had been more familiar with BR Chopra's teleserial of the same which, while very well done, stuck to the traditional line.

There were very strong and opposing views on Draupadi. Vatsala had always thought of her as a strong woman and a feminist icon, and found herself a little disappointed by the pettiness of her issues which ended up being among the goads for the war. While Anju felt that it was a realistic portrayal of the way life works for most of us, and completely related to Draupadi's lifelong quest for validation of herself. Jayshree thought that good or bad, Draupadi came across as a strong woman, not the long-suffering Nirupa Roy-esque Sita of the Ramayan who meekly keeps taking what everyone around her dishes out and finally, once the last straw is loaded on her back, runs home to mother. But Draupadi stands up for herself, dares to question the roles of women and the behavious of those around her, and is a very real power. Ali felt that she played a strong role in everything that happened through both arguments and gestures like keeping her hair unwashed and unbound for 13 years. As he said picturesquely, "The Pandavas must have said let's do this war otherwise this stinky hair of hers will stay that way forever!"

We debated whether the key motivation of Draupadi was her quest for love or her need for recognition as an individual, not the add-on to Dhri or the bounty to be equally shared among five brothers. We all thought it was interesting that she has a relatively unconventional view of her role, be it because of the prophecy she had to fulfil or because of her own strong will - she was not particularly involved with her children, and was much more focussed on her life with her husbands.

Many things in the book struck a chord with us - for instance the fact that despite Vyasa's specific warnings about the three occasions which will prove turning points, Draupadi pursues the very course of action she was warned against. Very like life's oh-no-seconds. And the fact that at the end Draupadi wishes she could have loved Bhima back the same way he loved her, since his love for her was the most uncomplicated and the purest. Don't so many of us wish we could have loved the nice guy/ gal back?

Karna, always one of the most interesting characters in the story, again stood out here as in fact the most honourable character, apart from his one lapse in Dhritarashtra's court at the vastraharan. Yudhistra, being Dharma Raja, loves drinking, gambling, loses control of himself while doing either, and then has to be persuaded to take up the right course of action in pursuing the war, while Karna pursues his Dharma without making the same fuss about it.

We found it interesting that while Chitra focuses the story on Draupadi, she called it The Palace of Illusions, thus giving it a greater philosophic scope for debate, as opposed to Pratibha Ray's Yajnaseni which continued to focus on Draupadi herself. One of the best truths in the book is the line that Krishna says about Sikhandi, which I am paraphrasing here - He believes it to be the truth, and therefore it is the truth. In fact the Palace of Illusions is an allusion to the Hindu concept of maya, which believes that the whole world is in fact just a creation of Maya - an illusion.