THE FIRES OF DRAUPADI by Swathi Deo Sambatha

Swathi Deo Sambatha

Nothing can douse the fire in a woman For she rose from the ashes Laughing at the faces of weak men Who did nothing to help her She shook her head weeping in the royal court Causing her dark, curled tresses to fall around her torn blouse Covering the dark red blood covering on her body And looked on with the three eyes of anger And that was all for her guilty husbands To create a war, a great great war So terrifying that it will be written With tears and metallic blood Weapons and arms strewn everywhere The stench of thousands dead, men and a woman Filling the air, as the Empress looked on For it to unfold as a nightmare for brave warriors Till she saw her monster and his death And bathed her dark tresses in his princely blood Only then did she put up her hair To that of a royal woman She loudly proclaimed at the funeral of her sons, “No one shall protect women from now on, For we will fight our own wars And we will win” Yet, for slighting a woman like that, One such war is not enough