Ceteris Scribus: Draupadi
- Ceteris Scribus
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Draupadi in Current India
I wake with a start. The air is thick, laden with an unnatural hum. No scent of sacred fire, no cries of warriors sharpening their swords. Instead, there is a cacophony - machines whirring, strange beasts with wheels moving at impossible speeds, and people absorbed in what seems like slabs of stone that glow with an inner light. I am not in Hastinapura. Nor in Indraprastha. The world I knew was gone.
A stranger approaches. She tells me I am in a place called ‘India,’ in an era where the years have passed beyond thousands since my time. She calls it the ‘twenty-first century.’ I listen, I observe, and I find myself stricken, not with fear or joy but with disbelief.
Love marriage, they call it. That a woman and man can choose each other, unfettered by dynastic concerns or political alliances. In my time, a woman’s marriage was a declaration of power and duty. My swayamvara was a grand display, where the greatest kings and warriors competed for my hand. Yet here, people wed for something called ‘love,’ disregarding caste, wealth, and lineage. And still, this love seems fragile, for I hear of ‘divorce’, the ability to leave one’s husband without consequence, without war, without the bloodshed of kinsmen.
Yet, the hypocrisy astounds me. Though they call it ‘modern,’ I learned that women’s fates are still bound by gold and power. Families scrutinize financial status before permitting a marriage. They check lineages, employment, and wealth as if performing a Yajna to determine fate. If such calculations still bind marriage, how different is this from my time? At least in my era, we were honest about it.
Commerce was simple in my age - gold, cattle, and land. You borrowed from moneylenders, offered your land as collateral, or sought favor from the king. But here, there are these ‘banks.’ Great halls of wealth where commoners store their riches, earning more by merely keeping it there. There is no barter, only slips of paper called ‘currency’ that hold value without any true weight of gold.
Then there are these strange ‘markets’ where men gamble upon numbers, determining the fate of an entire kingdom’s wealth. In my time, a gamble meant ruin - as it did for my husbands at the dice game. Yet here, they gamble every day on ‘stocks,’ and somehow, instead of exile, they grow richer!
I had five husbands, a bond forged by Kunti’s words and upheld by Dharma. Yet now, having more than one spouse is called a ‘crime.’ A man may not have multiple wives, nor a woman many husbands. Ironically, men abandon their wives, take mistresses, and replace spouses without question. They say they have freed women from bondage, yet some things remain the same, only hidden under a veil of civility.
And yet, I see something I could not have dreamed of in my time - women in positions of power. No longer mere queens, they are warriors of their fate, ruling in courts, commanding armies, and governing lands without the need of a husband or father. I see women who do not exist only as a man's honor but as forces of change, of wisdom, of industry. They no longer rely upon kings to speak for them; they raise their own voices, and the world listens.
If someone seeks to dishonor them, they do not plead to kings for justice. Instead, they approach ‘courts’ - structures not ruled by kings or priests but by laws written to protect all. A woman wronged can seek retribution without the need for a husband waging war for her honor. This is a world unimaginable to me.
Where is the magic? The Vedas, the sacred rituals, the power of divine intervention? I am told there is none. That gods do not walk the earth, that warriors do not wield celestial weapons, and that no sage may curse an enemy into oblivion.
Instead, there is something called ‘technology.’ With it, men have conquered the sky, traveled beyond the stars, and healed wounds that no sage could ever mend. Instead of astras, they have weapons made of metal that strike from distances unfathomable. There are no divine chariots, but great machines that fly through the sky.
Yet, even with all their wisdom, they have not conquered greed, arrogance, or war. The world still fights, only now with bullets instead of arrows.
There are no emperors here. No Hastinapura, no Magadha, no great kings sitting upon golden thrones. Instead, they call it ‘democracy’, a system where leaders are chosen, not by birth, but by the will of the people. No man rules by divine right but by the grace of those he governs.
It is a strange thought. We were told a king was born of Dharma, and that his rule was destiny. But here, rulers are temporary, their power fragile, and their authority questioned. Is this justice? Or is it merely another form of chaos, where men fight not with swords, but with words, seeking power through deceit rather than valor?
I stand among these wonders, my heart torn between admiration and sorrow. This world is free and yet still bound. Women walk without fear, yet still suffer beneath unspoken chains. Kings have fallen, yet men still hunger for power. Magic is dead, yet the impossible has been achieved.
Is this progress? Or merely another illusion, like the Maya of my time? Perhaps, in the end, all ages are the same, only dressed in different robes. And yet, if given a choice, would I return to my world of fire and war, or walk forward into this future of light and steel?
I do not know. But for now, I watch, and I wonder…
Note: This piece is published as part of Ceteris Scribus - a one-of-a-kind intellectual and creative article writing competition hosted on Unstop by The Contrarian. Participants could choose between imagining how historical figures would react to today’s world or analyzing the economics of their favoriten fictional world. This piece by Maitreyi Bhuyan secured 2nd place in the competition.
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