Week 7 Story: In Which Draupadi Pandava Serves Up Some Spicy Plantains

After a few years of being “the woman with five husbands”, Draupadi Pandava was used to being called, well, high maintenance. She was used to the stares, smirks, and side-eyes that came with an admittedly formidable reputation. Honestly, she rather liked it that way. The women of India knew that Draupadi was woman enough for not one, but five husbands, all of whom were reputable in their own right. Even if one had a rather serious gambling addiction.

Draupadi had made a personal promise not to show favor for one of the brothers over any of the others- in a group, anyway. On an individual level she had long since convinced them all that they held the largest piece of her heart- it was far easier to manipulate them that way. And Draupadi would know- manipulation was her forte. What could she say? She had never been one to settle. As a child, if she couldn’t decide between desserts, she would use her often underestimated abilities to make it happen. Draupadi was well versed in getting her way, which was why she wasn’t about to take the gambled-away-into-a-waitress gig sitting down, especially not on the knee of a nauseatingly self-satisfied sociopath. "Honestly!" she scoffed internally. "A loaded die does not a skillful gamesman make."

And so, while the taxpayer-funded royal thuggery attempted in vain to relieve her of her Grecian imported designer dress, Draupadi was doing her best to stop seething and start thinking. By the time everyone realized the unfruitful nature of the relentless unrolling of her garmentry, she had the beginnings of a plan.

One of the advantages to being a kitchen slave was the access to the food. Certain positions, regardless of occupational reach, were expendable. The staff responsible for sustenance, however, would always be inarguably necessary, and there, Draupadi reasoned, was the source of their incomparable power.

And so, when she showed up at Shakuni's ornately bedazzled room with a midnight snack, he didn’t question it. And he equally didn’t question it when she flashed him the doe eyes and dropped him a quick peck on the cheek while she reached into the back of his robes and switched out the tricked out gambling dice she found there, leaving him with a platter of fried plantains and absolutely no idea what was coming his way the next day.

Author's Note: This story was inspired by a sequence from the PDE Mahabharata in which Draupadi is gambled away by Yudhishthira in an unfortunate game involving his opponent, Shakuni, wielding a loaded die. She is subsequently dragged off by her hair and forced to become the equivalent of a house slave. I figured that her indigence toward her new class occupation would be motivation enough to use her resources and skills as a master manipulator to find a way out of this pickle! 

Image Info: A screengrab from Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, featuring R2-D2 after he is bargained into slave labor. (Sounded familiar!). Link.

Bibliography: PDE Mahabharata. The Gambling Match, Draupadi Lost. Source: Link.

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