The wax palace burns

Harish Seshadri as Adi

The burning of the wax palace (Lakshagraha) or the house of lac is a minor moment in the Mahabharata. The Pandavas find out about a plot to kill them, hatched by Duryodhana and an architect of ill-repute Purochana, when they are living in a small settlement called Varnavata. The Pandavas turn the trap to their advantage, setting off the fire themselves to cover their escape via a secret tunnel. In an ethically troubling decision, the Pandavas hoodwink a Nishada woman with five sons into staying at the house of lac the night of their escape. Their charred bodies served as plausible cover to make it seem that the Pandavas perished in the trap. When read as an instance of “structural violence” the incident is a grim reminder about political violence that can tear apart a society and pit one community against another. In Ultimate Kurukshetra, the burning of the wax palace cuts short Adi’s urban aspirations and turns him into a bitter man, hell-bent on revenge. As Maya says about Varnavata after that terrible incident, “The city was never the same.”

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