Week 10: Reading Diary A

• Incarnations (cont.)
• Draupadi finds out that her eldest sister Shikhandi is not a women, but a man.
• Draupadi gets to meet Shikhandi for the first time.
• “I waited with some excitement to view my sudden-found sister. I wondered what she looked like. Was her body hard and muscular, her arms scarred from weapons? Or was it her heart that had changed so that it no longer shook at the thought of killing?”(use quote)
• Shikhandi walked with grace, light and assured and on the balls of his feet. (pg. 45-46)
• Shikhandi was pleased to meet his sister Draupadi.
• “Little sister, I thank you from the depth of my soul for what you’ll do for me”
• -I wonder if Shikhandi will make his little sister kill the King.
• Shikhandi tells Draupadi his side of the story (bottom of pg. 46)
• He confessed that he had to be a man because only a man can do what he has to accomplish.
• Shikhandi has to kill the greatest warrior of their time, Bheeshma the terrible.
• Bheeshma- was the eight son of Kuru King Shantanu, whom was blessed with wish-long life and had sworn to serve the ruling Kuru King and grandfather of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas
• Bheeshma is the guardian of Hastinapur and granduncle to the prince Arjun (defeated King Draupada and Drona’s friend)
• The legend is: Shikhandi took the garland, and the King cried and called her foolish and unlucky and that was the reason she was banished.
• Shikhandi’s death: death upon a pyre (heap of combustible material, especially one for burning a corpse as part of a funeral ceremony). Flesh melting, eyelids burnt away, skull bursting.
• Pg. 47-48 (important)

Draupadi