Queens Can Bleed Too: Gandhari and the Pain of Powerlessness

Hello Everyone,

As part of the Blogchatter A to Z series, today we turn our attention to a queen who is remembered for her silence, her sacrifice, and the cloth she chose to tie over her eyes. But behind that cloth lived a world of pain, awareness, and an enduring struggle.
Today, we speak of Gandhari, the queen of Hastinapur, the mother of a hundred sons, and the woman who bled quietly in the corridors of power.

When Gandhari learned she would be married to a blind prince, she made a choice that shocked the kingdom. She blindfolded herself. It was not out of love alone. It was her way of making a statement. If her husband could not see the world, she would not see it either. But this decision, though respected, became her lifelong prison.

She tied the cloth not just around her eyes
But around every dream she could have lived
She did not go blind
She made herself invisible

Gandhari lived in a palace full of politics, egos, and pride. She was a mother who raised a hundred sons, yet watched helplessly as they were led by anger, hatred, and blind ambition. Her voice was often unheard in the chaos. She warned Duryodhana. She pleaded for peace. But her words were brushed aside in a world that listened more to power than to wisdom.

She did not hold a sword
But she carried battles within her chest
She did not walk the battlefield
But her heart broke with every fall

Her love for Duryodhana was deep and fierce. She saw his flaws, yet never stopped being his mother. She prayed for him, fasted for him, and in one of the most powerful moments of the Mahabharata, tried to protect him with her own strength. When she removed her blindfold and let her gaze fall upon his body, it was said her years of inner fire could make him invincible. But even then, fate intervened. Her power, like her pain, was never fully allowed to speak.

She would have given her life
If it could have saved his
She gave him her silence
She gave him her faith
And in the end
She gave him her tears

Her pain reached its peak when the war ended. Every one of her sons died. Her palace was filled with silence. Her motherhood had no more to give. And yet, she did not curse fate for long. She cursed Krishna instead. Not because she hated him, but because he, the knower of all, allowed it to happen. Her grief needed a name. Her sorrow needed direction. That curse was her final cry in a story where she had stayed quiet too long.

Even in her last days, Gandhari chose the forest. She walked away from the ruins of the palace. She chose peace, not revenge. Silence, not spectacle. Her strength was not in action, but in endurance. In choosing to still believe in dharma, even when it had shattered her world.

Gandhari’s story is not just about a mother or a queen. It is about every woman who stands tall in a space that refuses to hear her. Every voice that is silenced in the name of duty. Every heart that breaks in silence while holding the pieces of a kingdom that never truly belonged to her.

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z” and hyperlink it to https://www.theblogchatter.com

Anindita Rath
@scrambledwriter