Draupadi and Agaligai

Draupathi and Agaligai. Two great women. The favourites of Lord Vishnu. In two of His incarnations, He did the great act of rescuing them both. As Krishna, in the Mahabharatha, He comes to the help of Draupathi, who has been stripped publicly, and salvages her by supplying her with yards and yards of saree. Ducchadanan, the younger brother of Duriyodana, the arch-enemy of the Pandavas, feels exhausted as the great hour of seeing her Full-Monty, as she was born, is interminably deferred. In the Ramayana, as Ram, He salvages the wife of the great sage, Gautama; Agaligai, who had turned stone on realising her infidelity, or rather had been punished by her husband for her being unfaithful to him.

Two modern writers, one is alive and one has joined the world of the dear departed, have taken up these events from the great epics and subject these two events to different angles. One is Mahasweta Devi, a Bengali writer and the other one is Puthumaipithan, a Tamil writer. Mahasweta Devi's short story 'Draupadi' features a woman protagonist. She is known as Dopdi Mejnun and Draupadi. She is one of the Naxal women. She snoops around the regiments of the soldiers and tips her own men. She is on the list of the most wanted criminals. Her crime, she had been part of the gang that killed the local rich man, who never allowed the oppressed to draw water from his well. Draupadi has never been lousy except housing a litter of them in her tresses. She applies kerosene to her lock to kill them all. The government police force looks for the scent of kerosene in rivulets to nab her. She has been warned by her fellow villagers to be wary. As the police force has been ingenious, they nab her by catching hold of one of the Naxals as defaulter to their tenets. As she has made them suffer in woods and other places the members of the police force decide to have a feast on her. She is subjected to continuous rape by innumerable men of the special task force. She is bleeding profusely in her vagina and she is to be presented to the chief of the special task force. In order to make it happen, they dress her and cudgel her to the tent of the chief. All of a sudden, Draupadi cries and howls and throws away the draping cloth and stands naked before the chief, inviting him to be the next in the line of rapers. The chief asks the subordinates to cover her, to which she never budges herself and she makes them conclude that she is in her wit's end.

Puthumaipitthan's short story 'Papa Vimoshanam' (Salvation from Sin) commences with a warning from the writer, that the story may not be enjoyed by those who relish the Ramayana. It starts with the description of a life-like statue of a beautiful woman. The statue stands testimony to the skill of the sculptor, that has a tendency to make all men come away from their lascivious looks to perceive the dismay of the woman in her countenance. Then two boys saunter on the way ushered in by a sage, who are none but Ram and Lakshman. As they are playing on the muddy and ruddy track, there rises a lot of dust and which cascades the vision of them both making Ram trip on the stone. Ram is bamboozled at the appearance of a good looking woman. The sage Viswamitra explains everything to Ram and that the woman is Agaligai and her husband is Gautama. Gautama and Agaligai restart their life. She cannot stay as plain as she used to be before her sin. She is afraid that any word of hers would cause pain in Gautama. She is also subjected to mental torture by the wives of other sages, who distance themselves from her. Agaligai feels wounded as she suffers for the fault of not her own. Indra, the king of Indralokam has disguised himself as Gautama and enjoyed her. She cannot make out the difference between the caressing of her husband and a stranger. Days roll by and they get information about Ram's departure to the woods and the accompaniment of Sita and Lakshman. Gautama and Agaligai wait for their return. Sita and Ram visit them on the banks of the river Sarayu and Sita narrates the story of her ordeal to Agaligai. Agaligai is dumbfounded and she asks Sita why she has accepted to undergo the ordeal. Sita, imperturbed, says that it has to be proved to the world. Agaligai does not know who the world is. Ram and Gautama return from the stroll that they have embarked on leaving Sita with Agaligai. After the departure of the Royal couple, Gautama feels a great void in his hut. He thinks that the presence of children would assuage the situation. He approaches Agaligai to make love and Agaligai has already become a living stone. She cannot bear the disparity in treatment between her and Sita. Sita has been subjected to the ordeal of expiation of crime that she has never committed and Agaligai has been salvaged from the sin of adultery only after the act. She cannot understand the Gods and decides to lead a stony life.