She became the second wife of Pandu, the king of the Kuru Kingdom, and was the mother of the twins Nakula and Sahadeva, the youngest of the five Pandava brothers who play a central role in the epic.

With Pandu's consent and Kunti's divine assistance, Madri invoked the twin deities Nasatya and Darsa, collectively known as the Ashvins, receiving their blessing and subsequently giving birth to her sons, Nakula and Sahadeva.

Madri was renowned for her beauty and is described in the epic as being exceptionally attractive; as a result, Pandu one day succumbed to desire and attempted to make love to her, which led to his death due to the curse.

Overcome with remorse and grief, Madri entrusted her sons, Nakula and Sahadeva, to Kunti’s care and chose to jump into Pandu's funeral pyre, joining him in death.

Disturbed by the gravity of his actions and seeking repentance, Pandu chose to relinquish his royal duties and live an ascetic life in the forest.

[11][14] Kunti, the first wife of Pandu, possessed a mantra granted by the sage Durvasa prior to her marriage, which allowed her to summon any deity of her choice and bear a child by them.

During his exile, Pandu, hindered in fulfilling his religious duties due to his lack of an heir, discussed the matter with Kunti, urging her to "raise offspring in this time of distress."

Despite Madri’s repeated protests, Pandu made love to her, forgetting the curse placed upon him by the sage Kindama, which forbade him from intimate relations on penalty of death.

In the Southern recension of the Mahabharata, Pandu's death occurred on the day of Uttara Phalguni Nakshatra, coinciding with Arjuna's birthday.

[8] Madri, however, resisted Kunti’s request, stating that she felt bound to Pandu by an unfulfilled union, as he had approached her in desire at the time of his death.

Madri expressed her wish to follow Pandu into the afterlife to fulfill his desire,[16] also fearing she might not be able to raise Kunti’s children with equal dedication and affection.

[note 1][12][16][18] However, this account is contradicted by the very next stanza, which states that her dead body and that of her husband were handed over by sages to the Kaurava elders in Hastinapura for the funeral rites.

[19] The Svargarohana Parva (the final book of the Mahabharata) mentions that in the afterlife, Madri resides in the heavenly realm of the god Indra.

[15][8][6] According to Indologist and Mahabharata scholar Pradip Bhattacharya, Madri’s charms and physical appeal allowed her to win Pandu’s favoritism,[20] as seen when he grants her the freedom to choose her divine partner without the restrictions that were earlier imposed on Kunti.

[12] Other critics observe that Madri’s beauty, while notable, reduces her character in the epic to that of merely an "beloved wife," overshadowing her individuality and eventually leading to Pandu's demise.

[8] Madri is also recognized for her cleverness, managing to bear two children simultaneously in one chance, which unsettled Kunti and made her fear losing her status as the chief wife.

Bhattacharya sees Madri’s recognition of Kunti as an honest tribute to her own limitations, reflecting her lack of the “firmness of will” needed to rise above rivalry and ego.

[8] For her decision to commit sati (self-immolation) after Pandu’s death, Bhattacharya positions Madri within a broader pattern of dependent female characters in the Mahabharata, such as Ambika, Ambalika, and Gandhari, who conform to social or marital expectations.

This is in contrast to a different class of characters called the kanyas, like Kunti, Draupadi, and Satyavati, who are powerful independent figures with great influence in shaping the narrative of the epic.

Building on Sukthankar and Hopkins, scholar M. A. Mehendale contends that the conflicting accounts are due to textual conflation from an interpolation, where an external narrative was inserted into the text without consideration for internal consistency.

These discrepancies suggest that later writers may have modified the scenes to reflect medieval values that promoted widow immolation as a mark of honor and loyalty.