The Curse of Gandhari

Gandhari the blindfolded queen-mother of the Kauravas sees through it all…Gandhari has one day left to live. As she stares death in the face her memories travel back to the beginning of her story to life's unfairness at every point: A fiercely intelligent princess who wilfully blindfolded herself for the sake of her peevish visually-impaired husband; who underwent a horrible pregnancy to mother one hundred sons each as unworthy as the other; whose stern tapasya never earned her a place in people's hearts nor commanded the respect that Draupadi and Kunti attained; who even today is perceived either as an ingratiatingly self-sacrificing wife or a bad mother who was unable to control her sons and was therefore partly responsible for the great war of the Mahabharata…. In this insightful and sensitive portrayal Aditi Banerjee rescues Gandhari from being reduced to a mere symbol of her blindfold. She builds her up as Ved Vyasa did as an unconventional heroine of great strength and iron will – who when crossed embarked upon a complex relationship with Lord Krishna and became the queen who cursed a God…