Kaikeyi

by Vaishnavi Patel

I WAS BORN ON the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.

The people of Bharat have often blamed my father for my sins, as if a woman cannot own her actions.

Nobody else had thought about whether I might be lonely, a girl in a family of men.

Perhaps we were kin, they and I, yearning for something unnameable, a place where we could stretch our wings and belong.

Ashvin acted nothing like how I would have behaved had I had the privilege of being a boy, but then again, most boys knew nothing of their incredible luck.

If they wished me to be a jealous, faithless, prideful woman, I would give them what they wanted.

“Because those who are good question themselves. Because those who are good always wonder if there was a better way, a way that could have helped more and hurt less. That feeling is why you are good.”

“Of all the godsforsaken I have known in my immortal life, you drew the worst lot. Your fate was written out thus: that you had to exile your own son, and thereby ignite the great battle between good and evil.”

doorstep. I had read stories about what happened when the gods waged open war in the mortal realm. The world burned.

Kosala had become a pawn of the gods.

“I suppose you are right,” I say. “In the end, I have always been concerned with mortal affairs. But the fact that they were mortal did not make them small. Nor did it make me wrong.”

I am at peace, for I know the truth. Before this story was Rama’s, it was mine.