The Women Who Rolled The Dice

Draupadi - The One With The Flames

Born for a purpose,
A weapon, throughout.
Denied a childhood, as
She burst from flames.

A tool, a ploy, an extraneous trick
To make an alliance that would change the world.
Twas Arjun she loved, he whom she chose
She savored the flames.

Her mother-in-law spoke,
Her life forever changed.
She married them all,
She blazed in the flames.

She was a wife and a queen
And a mother of five
She reigned in glory,
​She reveled in the flames.

And in a minute, a second,
It all came crashing down.
They dragged her to court
As she suffered the flames.

But she stood, and she spoke,
And she beseeched the Lord.
And the cloth would never end,
As she battled the flames.

And victorious she stood,
Not broken, but bruised,
And she vowed revenge,
She blistered in the flames.

And to exile she went,
Biding her time all the way,
With tactics and strategy, playing a game,
As she simmered in the flames.

As Sairandhri she worked,
and saw Kichaka destroyed,
As the Virata war came upon them,
As she trained the flames.

Then blood, and pain, and misery,
And death all around,
With her hair drenched with blood,
she tasted the flames.

Eighteen days they fought.
Father, brother, sons, all lost.
As peace finally prevailed,
she cooled her flames.

They stopped, and breathed,
To heaven they went,
As she tumbled off a cliff,
She froze in her flames.

Draupadi, the queen,
she ruled just and true.
Reunited in heaven,
she became one with the flames.

Finally.

Credits: Vyasa Mahabharatha (Translation by Ganguli)