Kaikeyi

by Vaishnavi Patel

It is admirable to seek out more knowledge, so long as you form your own opinions.”

Part of me wished to stay, to argue with these pompous men who believed they knew better because they had surrounded themselves with scrolls and shut themselves off from progress.

My disinterest in the marital bed and my lack of desire for Dasharath did not matter. I loved him like I would love a dear friend, and he had never caused me pain. For a woman, even in our new world, that was more than plenty.

“Loyalty to your family is an excellent quality, and to be commended. But you can be someone beyond your loyalty—and you should be, because you have so much to offer.”

“Even if you prevail against me, a reckoning will come for your precious city.”

But I still did not understand why the asura had tried to take a city, or set his sights on Ayodhya.

He freed me from the prison that meddling goddess placed me into.”

I would like to believe that is the moment when I sealed my fate, and his fate, and Rama’s and Sita’s fate, and all the rest. But I know that even without my promise to him, I would not have done anything differently.

and seeing this, my life’s work, gone in mere months… I felt empty. The absence, in a way, was worse than pain.

But I cannot help you wage unnecessary war. Already you have put me and your brother in harm’s way—even if unknowingly.

And it seemed once again, my wishes held no weight. It was almost incomprehensible that my desires should matter so little, and yet I was ashamed at my surprise.

Had I really believed that things had changed? Years and years of work, to have a voice, to be respected, but my brother would still honor the words of men over my will.

“It is not weak to avoid war,”

“I do not do this to hurt you. Perhaps it will be useful for Ayodhya to clash with another kingdom first. To learn its own strength. You have to understand, there is a divine purpose at work. Nothing can compromise it.”

“War may cause destruction, but it is also glorious. You know that,”

But he said a wise man taught him that disagreement with the gods was sympathy for evil,

I did not want to believe that any man would consider hitting a woman, let alone a god. But perhaps she was just a mortal to Rama, someone who was getting in his way. And perhaps he was more man than god in some ways.

I had raised a son who would threaten a woman. Who would insinuate violence toward her. It was a grief beyond tears to contemplate, the totality of my failure.

I had heard husbands speak like this before. I had heard it for years, since the inception of the Women’s Council.

Abusive

You threaten people because you feel a lack of control.

“I understand what I did was wrong. Of course I do. But you are overreacting. This is more important. And I do not understand why you move so quickly to defend Sita, but not to defend the entire world, which I am telling you will suffer under the coming onslaught. Why do you not care for those countless others?”

“Or are you only seeing what you wish to see, so that you can keep your life comfortable?

though, I remembered slapping him long ago. Had I been the one to teach him to use violence? No. It was not my fault alone.

“You might be different, Ma. But surely you know that most women introduce weakness into the world.”

“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.”

“A boon is an oath that cannot be ignored. An oath witnessed by the gods.

“I do not want your influence in me. My mind is my own, and that is all I have left.”

It reminded me of the scene around his battlefield bedside all those years ago—I felt the same panic, the same guilt. But this time I was not his savior. I was his ruin.

And yet, I thought about it. The release of death might be preferable to the life that stretched before me now.

But the idea of lifting my limbs out of the soft nest of blankets, of having to hold up my own body and my own head, was overwhelming. Only when the need to eat or relieve myself became too strong would I emerge.

Vishnu was the protector, one of the strongest gods. He returned to earth, age after age, to save us from demonkind.

“There is a great asura whose influence stretches across the south of this land,” Nidra said. “He does not bow to the power of the gods but instead brings unnatural creations into this world, usurping our authority. It is Rama’s duty to bring the gods’ rule back to this earth.

What you want would not bring change. It is something you have never understood.

That night I lay awake in bed, unable to get the pot seller out of my mind. Her firm posture, her smile—she was not unhappy or angry because her yuvraja was gone and the soldiers had marched out. She was earning her livelihood, and glad of it.

One of the girls mouthed the answer to every question, confident in her abilities. Instead of averting my eyes, I watched greedily. They switched from sums to religious studies, something that women had once been forbidden from practicing. But still the girls sat there, learning the lessons.

It was a child, freer than her mother had been.

I had caused my family great pain. But there were others besides the gods and the godsforsaken. Their paths were not set. And it seemed possible—no, with each passing day it seemed certain—that perhaps I had been able to change something after all.

I could not help these women anymore, but I did not need to. Now they helped me.

By never using the Binding Plane around my sons, I had missed the signs of Rama’s godhood. That mistake had cost me Rama. Lakshmana had been taken from me too. In every step, trying to protect my children, I had failed them. But now, in the Binding Plane, I had one son back.

In front of me stretched the years of Bharata’s reign. The people of Kosala, standing together, powerful and safe. Their paths forever altered, stretching toward a future of peace. I could even advise Bharata, but that power mattered little to me. Kaushalya could do it just as well. What truly warmed my heart was the idea that if I spoke, Bharata would listen to me. I would have my people back. I could not help Rama, I could not even stop him, but I could do this. I could have this.

“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.”

Ravana’s missives ended shortly after he took Sita with him to Lanka. I hope she has been happy there, but I cannot honestly know—Ravana’s final letters were not those of the kind man I first met, but that of a man—an asura—readying for unnecessary war.

Rama’s march to the sea has taken years, and I have heard he has cleansed the world of evil in his path, has deposed false kings and installed the righteous back to power.

Rama will defeat Ravana and will return home victorious.

But when he takes the throne, three or four years hence, he will be even more beloved than when he left.

Rama on his travels found a woman made of stone, and with his divine touch freed her.

Maybe the passage of the years has done its work, and that free of the influence of others Rama has matured into the man I always wished him to be. I must hope for it, because I have read enough scrolls to know that one day these events will be Rama’s alone. The sages will tell of a righteous prince who cleansed the world of asuras, and perhaps deign to mention his heartless mother who exiled him.

Before this story was Rama’s, it was mine.

All these plot points from the Ramayana appear in Kaikeyi, but the novel takes these and expands on her story, filling in the gaps and giving Kaikeyi an inner life—motivations and desires and relationships—so we can understand why she takes the extreme actions that she does.

Kaikeyi ends before Sita’s kidnapping,