THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:She neither wins nor fails, yet she fights relentlessly. She is taunted and mocked at and is even punished. Draupadi’s sparring with the forces of evil goes in vain mostly, unpaid in terms of good, but she never budges.
‘Kimartham Draupadi’, (meaning ‘Why Draupadi?) a play scripted and presented in Sanskrit, draws contemporary equivalents to the ‘fire born’ woman in Mahabharata.
At its eighth anniversary, Kanal Samskarika Vedi dedicates a play for femininity, written by a research scholar in Sanskrit Aswathy Vijayan, the premiere of which will be held on the occasion of the Vayala Vasudevan Pillai-Kanal Award ceremony.
The base reference text being the epic Mahabharata, the script writer says an influence from ‘Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi’ by Jnanpith laureate Prathibha Ray prompted her to zero in on the character for her maiden script.
“Draupadi, in Ray’s work, is stubborn, a factor that drew me closer to the character. ‘Kimartham Draupadi’ stays away from being female-centric; at the same time, it invites attention to women, their problems and the milieu through one lead character from a royal family. Why, because, women on the whole, irrespective of their caste or creed, have commonality with the issues and sufferings heaped upon them. She who dares to question is still stoned at, looked upon with scorn or suspicion. This is something everyone can think about,” says Aswathy.
Bound within strictures, Draupadi battles hard for the right and virtue, as a result of which she never gets a way out. This only lets the magnitude of her spirits fly higher and higher. The play also brings on stage a less-known part, a platonic love between Draupadi and Krishna. “Most are familiar with the timely intervention of Krishna when she was dragged to the court of Kauravas for being disrobed. Other than that, they both were attracted to each other, on which the play speaks,” says Aswathy.
The one-and-a-half-hour play has amazing choreography brimming with flexi moves done by director Aromal T. “A dance-drama was what we planned first. Then, we chose the dialogue form to explore the crux and convey it in its original form before the audience,” says Aromal. Background score is by Satheesh Narayanan. The drama will be staged at Hassan Marikar Hall on coming Wednesday, at 6.30 pm.