I was looking at another of love’s many faces. It made us ready to wreak havoc—even on people we cared for—in order to protect those whom we cherished more. Wasn’t it the same force that impelled Kaikeyi to turn on Ram in order to guard her own son’s interest? Wasn’t it the same force that led Manthara—for the hunchback, I suspected, was the orchestrator of this entire disaster—to whisper directives to Kaikeyi, whom she still saw as the innocent child to whom she’d devoted her entire misshapen life?
