Panchali is fully conscious of her beauty and its power, for she
uses it in getting her way with Bhima in Virata’s kitchen (Virata
Parva 20) and with Krishna in turning the peace-embassy into a
declaration of war (Udyoga Parva 82). The captivating pose she
strikes when alone in Kamyaka forest, which enchants Jayadratha is a
telling instance of this. Leaning against a kadamba tree, holding
on to a branch with an upraised hand, her upper garment displaced, she
flashes like lightning against clouds or like the flame of a lamp
quivering in the night-breeze.[[1]] Lovely as Sita left
alone in the wilderness, no Ravana would have succeeded in spiriting
Draupadi away. When Jayadratha seizes her, she repulses him so hard that
he falls to the ground! Retaining full control of her faculties, she
mounts his chariot on finding him bent on forcing her, calmly asking the
family priest to report to her husbands. No Sita-like lamentation here,
nor shrill outcries for succour! As her husbands close up on Jayadratha,
she taunts him with an elaborate description of the prowess of each and
the inevitable trouncing that will follow.
The manner in which Draupadi manipulates Bhima to destroy Kichaka
is a fascinating lesson in the art and craft of sexual power. She does not
turn to Arjuna, knowing him to be a true disciple of Yudhishthira as seen
in the dice-game. Then Bhima alone had roared out his outrage. Now she
seeks him out in the dark of the night. Finding him asleep in the kitchen,
she snuggles up to him like a woman aroused, as a wild she-crane
presses close to its mate and a three-year old cow in season rubs against
a bull. She twines herself round Bhima as a creeper entwines a massive shala
tree on Gomati’s banks, as a lioness clasps the sleeping king of beasts
in a dense forest, as a she-elephant embraces a huge tusker. As Bhima
awakens in her arms, Draupadi administers the coup-de-grace by
addressing him in dulcet vina-like tones pitched at the gandhara
note, the third in the octave. To rouse his anger, she narrates all her
misfortunes, even how she, a princess, has now to carry water for the
queen’s toilet and particularly mentions how she swoons when he wrestles
with wild beasts, giving rise to barbed comments from maids. Finally, in
an ineffable feminine touch she extends her palms to him, chapped with
grinding unguents for the queen. His reaction is all that she had planned
for so consummately:
“Wolf-waisted foe-crushing Bhima covered
His face with the
Delicate, chapped hands of his wife,
And burst into tears.” (Virata Parva, 20.30)
Kichaka’s death is sealed. When Kichaka has been pounded to
death, instead of hiding in safety she recklessly flaunts the corpse
before his kin, revelling in her revenge. They abduct her and she has
again to be saved by Bhima from being burnt to death.
Earlier, in the dice-game Yajnaseni shocks everyone by challenging
the Kuru elders’ very concept of dharma in a crisis where the modern
woman would collapse in hysterics. Instead of meekly obeying her
husband’s summons, she sends back a query which none can answer: How
could Yudhishthira, having lost himself, stake her at all? She has a
brilliant mind, is utterly “one-in-herself” and does not hesitate in
berating the Kuru elders for countenancing wickedness. As Karna directs
her to be dragged away to the servants’ quarters, she cries out to her
silent husbands.
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