How many retellings of Draupadi are too many?

Every generation of Indian storytellers has writers who are inexorably drawn to some of its most ancient stories. “Obviously, neither writers nor publishers worry about readers not knowing any of the characters.” Ira Mukhoty’s first novel follows in this tradition that Deshpande characterises as the “zeitgeist” of our times in literature. But this assertion is beginning to ring false—from Irawati Karve to Amruta Patil, to Karthika Nair and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Draupadi’s tale has been recounted in non-fiction, graphic narrative, poetry, and fiction many times over. She criticises versions of the story that demonise the woman : “This natural sequence of events was distorted by later narrators because they wanted their heroes to be above the reproach of having killed six innocent persons.” Mukhoty tells the stories in the third person, but with the interiority of the main character guiding the narrative. In other instances, Mukhoty-as-narrator clearly steps in to offer more layers to her telling, as in the scene where Sushila, who works for Draupadi’s family, is forced to part with her own family when the princess is married: “Sushila does not say that she had to leave behind her own husband to accompany Draupadi, and her young son, whose soft brown curls and laughing dark eyes she will never see again.