Kaikeyi

“I bit down on my tongue. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and I swallowed before it could stain my teeth. I had no idea how to take on any of my mother’s responsibilities, nor did I have any desire to.”

The sensory detail of the blood filling Kaikeyi’s mouth deepens the tension surrounding her future after her mother’s banishment. Patel imbues the vivid description of Kaikeyi tasting her own blood metaphoric resonance, underscoring the ways her position as yuvradnyi will drain her greatly.

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

Patel uses the word kin several times throughout the text when comparing Kaikeyi to others—notably, the horses she references here. In comparing Kaikeyi to the horses of Kekaya, Patel draws a connection between Kaikeyi and nature and between Kaikeyi’s yearning for freedom and the bridled animals’ desire for the same.

“I saw something in his expression, a ferocity, that I recognized as kin.”

Patel again uses “kin” to describe Kaikeyi’s relationship with Dasharath. She carefully composes a scene for the meeting of the two characters that does not hint at romance, but rather at friendship, as Kaikeyi does not experience romantic or sexual desire.

“Without my conscious thought, the idea passed through our dark blue connection, a black disease speeding its way toward my brother’s chest with the force of a piercing arrow.”

Patel uses vivid, detailed language to describe the crumbling of Yudhajit and Kaikeyi’s bond. The violence of the arrow metaphor demonstrates the depth of Kaikeyi’s pain at losing her brother and foreshadows Yudhajit’s violent death later in the text.

“Another lie. The only one that would quiet them, for of course the gods would assist in saving their beloved raja.”

Kaikeyi’s assertion that the gods are liars harkens back to her childhood attempts to grapple with the moral underpinnings of truth and lies. As a child, her mother as reads her a story in which a god lied, and Kaikeyi questions how the gods can lie and be good. Her mother says, “The gods do what they must”—a sentiment she repeats about the story of Gautama later in the text (8).

“I realized I had so much to learn about the lives of other women. I had long cared only for my own independence, but there were so many who were far less free. Knowing this bothered me for reasons I could not quite understand.”

In depicting Kaikeyi’s first trip to Ayodhya as a feminist awakening, Patel makes explicit the novel’s goal of Subverting the Prescribed Roles of Women in a Patriarchy. In Kekaya, Kaikeyi feels more concerned about her own freedoms and her own accumulation of power, but Manthara shows her the marketplace and allows Kaikeyi to realize how much further the patriarchal oppression of women reaches.

“Maybe Ravana had a grander vision for the future. But he was a man, and could dream like that. This new Binding Plane, the potential of the present—that was enough for me.”

Ravana’s desire to overcome the gods foreshadows his later conflict against Rama. It also allows Patel to position him in contrast to Kaikeyi, who seeks to use her magic to change the present standing of women in Ayodhya.

“A woman, speaking to a god as her equal. A woman, saving her husband. A woman, outsmarting death. It soothed me, for a few minutes, to imagine myself as Savitri, even if I knew deep in my heart that hers was not my path.”

The story Manthara tells Kaikeyi hints at all the things Kaikeyi has done or will do: she speaks to Rama—a god—as her equal. She saves Dasharath’s life. She survives her encounter with Shishir.

“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. If my mother had.”

Kaikeyi’s pregnancy gives her a new perspective on her own mother and makes her to feel a closer kinship with her. The pregnancy also allows her to connect with the maternal fears of all women who worry their daughters will suffer in a world built to oppress and mistreat them, inspiring her to seek more concrete, tangible change.

“No such feelings for Dasharath, or any person, had ever surfaced in me. I was comfortable with my husband, loved him as a dear friend, but the pull of romance meant nothing to me. I could be happy for those in love, but I could not understand.”

Patel explicitly characterizes Kaikeyi as feeling no sexual or romantic desire, albeit without using the term asexual. The insights Patel gives the reader into Kaikeyi’s internal thoughts via her narration suggest that Kaikeyi’s sexuality contributes to her feelings of “otherness” in society.

“I felt peaceful, light in a way I hadn’t been in years. I had a place here, with four perfect, beautiful sons, who could be happy in a way I had never been as a child. I had a family, and they loved me.”

Midway through Part 2 of the novel, Kaikeyi feels happy and at peace—a structural calm before storm of Rama’s godhood and growing misogyny. In enumerating all the things Kaikeyi loves about her life, Patel establishes the narrative when all she holds dear is threatened by her conflict with Rama.

“But these women who aspired to start their own councils were right about one thing—there was a power in listening, in trust between women.”

The feminist lens Patel uses to craft her retelling of Kaikeyi’s story undergirds the novel’s thematic exploration of The Complexities of Power and Leadership. Women create power amongst themselves by building communities that uplift the voices of women, making them stronger together.

“Rama knew what he was. Rama knew of his godhood and had spoken about it with this sage rather than his own family.”

The betrayal Kaikeyi feels that Rama confides his knowledge of his godhood to Vamadeva reflects the disgust Kaikeyi feels for Vamadeva’s misogynistic beliefs. Vamadeva attempts to guide and shape Rama’s power for his own agenda by working to convince Rama of his divinely ordained destiny without the interference of Kaikeyi or his other mothers, pointing to the novel’s thematic interest in Destiny Versus Autonomy.

“The women who come to your council are the same ones who step out of their homes, leaving their husbands and children to fill roles they should not have to.”

The sages criticize Kaikeyi for giving women more power and control over their lives. Here, Patel interrogates the religious ideals that keep women subservient, asserting that this oppression does not stem from the will of the gods, but from the will of men.

“I knew then, in my bones, that I had not yet seen the extent of the damage. I needed to be back in Ayodhya, as soon as possible.”

Patel uses the last lines of Part 3 to foreshadow the reveal of Rama’s coup in Ayodhya. The author raises the dramatic tension ahead of Kaikeyi’s return home, and continues to escalate the narrative stakes throughout most of Part 4.

“The absence, in a way, was worse than pain. I could not bring myself to even try to reinvigorate those threads.”

By establishing the symbolic connection between the Binding Plane and Kaikeyi’s personal power, Patel imbues Kaikeyi’s loss of the plane with a deep sense of agony. Kaikeyi spends decades cultivating relationships and diplomatic power that Rama rips away from her in less than six months.

“Without warning, I was standing before a holy fire, Agni’s words closing around me like a trap. It is what you will do.”

The reference to Agni’s warning foreshadows Kaikeyi’s decision to exile Rama and the connection of that decision to the gods’ destiny. Kaikeyi believes that even before Rama’s birth, her destiny was sealed.

“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.”

Rama disregards Kaikeyi’s urging to avoid war, illustrating his lack of care for mortal life. He places an emphasis on his “divine purpose” above all else, which pushes Kaikeyi to exile him.

“Our bond, that great construction that had carried us through my father’s hall to the palace of Ayodhya, from the battlefield to the council room to the building of a revolutionary kingdom—that golden thread that had been so vital, so precious—snapped in two.”

Kaikeyi’s loss of Dasharath mirrors her loss of Yudhajit earlier in the text, escalating the central conflict between Kaikeyi and Rama. Kaikeyi’s bond with Dasharath snaps in half after Rama’s influence chokes him. He must honor the boons, but Rama’s control over him pushes him not to give him—a tension that rips him away from Kaikeyi despite their decades of friendship.

“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.”

Manthara reassures Kaikeyi that she is good—an inversion of the traditional Ramayana narrative in which Manthara pushes Kaikeyi to exile Rama for her own gains. In Patel’s version, she reassures Kaikeyi that it was necessary for the good of the kingdom and the plan of the gods.

“Was it Rama’s influence causing these boys to run headlong into war? He had wanted to take the men of the kingdom to war against evil, but perhaps the seeds of belligerence he had planted were flowering in this way instead.”

Kaikeyi identifies the ways Rama’s war-mongering influence on his brothers shifts from a desire to fulfill his divine purpose to a bloodlust for war—a insight that reflects her growing wisdom. The juxtaposition of the image of flowering and the violence of war makes Kaikeyi’s words more impactful.

“What use was action? My actions had been meaningless. All I had done was hasten Rama toward his destiny. I had failed to protect Sita and consigned Lakshmana to ten years of sleeplessness, and Urmila to ten years of dreams. Ravana’s fate was sealed. I had destroyed my relationships with my brother and my sons, and now they were about to go to war.”

In Part 4, Patel brings Kaikeyi to the low point in her arc—she feels her life has been meaningless and the changes she has worked to create ineffective. However, Patel later reveals the fruits of Kaikeyi’s efforts when the women that Kaikeyi helped on the Women’s Council help her on her journey back to Ayodhya.

“‘I am your mother,’ I said simply. ‘All I ever want is what is best for you and the kingdom. It seemed that you were the one unwilling to forgive me for what I had done. But I did it to protect you, to protect us all.’”

Kaikeyi’s motherly love overcomes any feelings of anger or betrayal she feels about Bharata’s refusal to become raja. Patel’s narrative suggests that the power of forgiveness reforges her bond with Bharata and heals the kingdom.