‘Who said feminists can’t look good?’

Let me put some lipstick on,” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni says before facing a camera.

Let me put some lipstick on,” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni says before facing a camera. “I think strong women and attractive women are good things to be,” says the author of The Palace of Illusions, her 2008 novel with the Mahabharata’sDraupadi as the protagonist.

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Divakurni’s Draupadi has a queen’s pride, a sharp intellect and a strong will. Talking about re-interpreting the character, she said, “The Mahabharata is an action-based epic. It only shows Draupadi’s actions, not her thoughts. I started imagining how she would be from inside and her internal thoughts processes.”

After The Palace of Illusions, Chitra wrote One Amazing Thing. This 2010 novel deals with a primal aspect of human behaviour: what do we do when our lives are threatened? This is the story of nine people going to the Indian consulate in America on the same day an earthquake strikes.