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Draupadi’s Dharma
Pramila Venkateswaran

Look around, dear Yudhishthira,
everywhere women yearn for the ordinary--
cook, clean, love, gossip, sleep--
dream ordinary dreams of years stretching out
like the view from a window,
trees against a blue sky, a road
with people beginning or ending their day,
birds pecking grain.

How long is this war?
How much longer, Yudhishthira?
I want a normal life in Hastinapura,
somewhere.

I want you to be a normal husband,
your brothers to live normal lives.
I’ve forgotten what normal feels like
among carnage wrought by willfulness.

You talk of grand things,
like getting your kingdom back,
but what of your dharma toward me,
your Draupadi? And love?

I want the simple,
the beginning when love created
the universe and the universe replied.
I do not want the poetry of incandescence,
exotic, grand truths, revelations.
I do not want to walk into a horizon lined
with fences of fire.

My spirit is resilient, no doubt,
despite my rape at that demon’s wild hands,
your silence colder than death.
Listen, I’ll be no pawn, no mute.
It’s time for you to let go, Yudhishthira,
of your cock-eyed dharma;
I’m through.

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