Kaikeyi

by Vaishnavi Patel

I often wondered, as our horses flew across the fields, as their hooves kicked up dust from sun-warmed earth and their breath dissipated into the cooling air, if they remembered where they came from. If they longed for more, for the vast expanse of the skies. Perhaps we were kin, they and I, yearning for something unnameable, a place where we could stretch our wings and belong.

If a woman crafted by the gods themselves could be consigned to this fate, what hope was there for a woman born of a woman?

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.

Intelligence doesn’t make me less of a woman, and I would think that you knew that.”

And if I closed my eyes, my heart remembered the feel of running through the grounds with my brothers, of sparring with Yudhajit and lying in the grasses talking for hours. I wished I could capture the feeling somehow, etch it into my bones so I would have it always.

Pretty words, flattery. Such things may have been the art of women, but they were the weakness of powerful men.

“And here everyone has been wondering whether you are shy or superior.” “Instead, I am simply a fool,” I said with a small smile.

I did not wish to bring a daughter into this world of men, into a world that would silence her thoughts before she could even speak them. I wondered how many women had felt this same fear, deep in their bones.

I could not change the minds of the gods, but I could change the minds of men.

The future could not be taught by the past.