Mother Kaikeyi

[Guest guest]

!! Sri Rama Jayam !!

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Hello Group,

I would like to share a feature on the life of the beloved mother of Lord Rama

- Mother Kaikeyi. This is a novel with an innerlook of the happenings running

around the exile of Rama & Kaikeyi's misfortune, inside the palace of Ayodhya.

Interested devotees

can access more information on the availability of this popular writing at the

source link attached at the end.

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Our greatest national epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, bristle with irony. The

ostensible root of the misfortunes visited upon the protagonist is also the

bedrock on which the epic is founded. Would the world have the Song

Celestial-GITA, if Dhritarashtra, the veritable trunk of the tree of adharma,

had not asked Sanjaya to relate what was happening on Dharamakshetre

Kurukshetre? And what would be left for the Adi-kavi to relate in the life of

Rama devoid of fourteen years' exile? The Mahabharata story can exist, its epic

status unimpaired, without the Gita; but without a Kaikeyi, the Ramayana?

It degenerates into a tame " and they lived happily ever after " fairy tale with

the marriages of the four brothers. Yet, over the millennia, Kaikeyi has been

bracketed with Shakuni as the villain-of-the-piece and her role ever seen as on

par with Dhritarashtra's. Actually, Kaikeyi's fate has been worse than

Shakuni's.

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Kaikeyi, however, remained a character no one appeared willing to touch with the

magic wand of redemption. For, does she not present a picture of heartless

selfishness womankind at its most degenerate, driving the avatara himself into

exile, for the sake of her son's inheritance? It is this " horrible woman " about

whom " Amreeta Syam " dares to write. Her daring is all the more astonishing

coming, as it flies in the face of universal condemnation typified in the

reaction of the author's own mother recorded in the " Dedication " : 'To my mother

who asked, " Why are you writing a book about Kaikeyi? She was a horrible woman. "

....And then grew to like the " horrible woman " for herself.' Syam's Kaikeyi is by

no means Valmiki's one-dimensional character. She is fully fleshed out through a

series of dramatic monologues; not pristinely pure like Kaushalya, so

uninterestingly Satvik; nor, like Sumitra, a dumb shadow mutely serving the

elder queens with not a thought to spare for herself or her progeny. No wonder,

Kaikeyi was Dasharatha's favorite, as the only interesting feminine company he

had been able to acquire in his large harem!

There are overtones of Greek tragedy in Syam's portrayal of her character. For,

Kaikeyi tempts fate by " Forever grabbing/at things/not hers " - imagining that

all four are her sons; that Rama is her first born (although Bharata resembles

her husband the most, she neglects him, even berates her brother for favoring

Bharata instead of Rama, and has to be reminded that Bharata is his nephew);

that Dasharatha and Ayodhya are hers only; and, later, that Bharata belongs only

to her, forgetting that he also belongs his father, his brothers and most of

all, to himself. In a Sophoclean touch, she dares to question the blind sage's

curse on childless Dasharatha, for where is the son to fructify it? Caught in

the maelstrom of her ego's obsession, she invites destruction by scorning

Dasharatha's importunate reminders about the curse as she insists on being

granted her two boons.

Syam's depiction of the sequence leading to the reversal in Rama-doting

Kaikeyi's attitude rings completely true psychologically. When Rama ignores her

desires for the first time and leaves her apartments to spend the night before

the coronation in Kaushalya's chamber, Kaikeyi suddenly awakens to the

realization that Kaushalya and not she will be the Queen Mother, and it is not

her son Bharata who will be crowned. 'Reason' and 'Instinct', in Syam's words,

" the ego's grasping claws and the heart's selfless love " are at war. The

interaction with Dasharatha over the two boons is utterly engrossing writing,

pulsating with the flow and counter-flow of differing emotions, punctuated by

the repetitive death-knell of " My two boons/My King " , till exulting " reason "

wins the day at the cost of her life's greatest love, leaving Kaikeyi " with

victory/cold and gloating " . She is left in complete isolation, pictured forth in

a superb image: " The apartment closed around me... the walls/of the room/grew

cold with/a forgotten curse. "

The build-up to the final reversal of the situation and her recognition of the

unacceptable nature of her decisions is inexorable. First, when the city does

not welcome Bharata, she ignores it and interprets his decision to bring back

Rama as a ploy to win over the subjects. Here Syam departs from the original in

not having Kaikeyi accompany her son on this mission, in order to remain true to

the characterization she has painstakingly brought alive. When Bharata refuses

to rule from the throne, Syam has Kaikeyi urge him in open court (again none of

the other queens put on an appearance) to govern the kingdom. When he leaves

Ayodhya, she realizes that she has lost her sons and her husband for nothing.

That is when she longs to recapture the happiness of the past, which she had

been too busy to notice in the bustling days.

Syam's treatment could have achieved even further depths of insight if she had

taken into account the research of N.R.Navlekar - as Dr. Dipak Chandra did in

his 1983 novel, Janani Kaikeyi - which brings out two major factors explaining

the conduct of Kaikeyi. The first is that Kaikeyi is the youngest queen, which

is the secret of the fascination she exercises over Dasharatha. The second is

that her father, King of the mountainous Kekaya kingdom, agreed to middle-aged

Dasharatha's importunate requests putting the same condition that the

fisher-king, Dasaraja, put to Shantanu in response to his request for the hand

of Satyavati: that his daughter's son would inherit the kingdom of Ayodhya. It

is to avoid this eventuality that from early childhood Dasharatha keeps sending

Kaikeyi's children to their maternal uncle's kingdom far from Ayodhya. His

intentions become quite transparent when he rushes through the formalities of

declaring Kaushalya's son as the heir-apparent in the absence of Kaikeyi's sons,

and takes care not to inform his favorite queen Kaikeyi. It is Manthara, the

faithful family retainer accompanying Kaikeyi from her father's house, much as

Shakuni comes with Gandhari, who reminded the oblivious Kaikeyi of her husband's

broken promise. That is when Kaikeyi sees through Dasharatha's intrigue to go

back on the undertaking forming the basis of their marriage, and utilizes his

commitment to grant her two boons in order to win back for her son his

birthright. Dipak Chandra adds to this the further motivation of Dasharatha not

wanting a son of mixed blood (he makes Kaikeyi non-Aryan Harappan) on the

throne.

Kaikeyi lets nothing stop her in safeguarding her son's inheritance - the threat

of widowhood, which becomes a reality; the outrage of all Ayodhya, which turns

into the implacable condemnation of all generations to follow. The tragedy of

Kaikeyi lies in the rejection of her awesome sacrifice by the very person for

whom she went through fire: her son Bharata.

Syam has arranged her work in five parts, portraying the complex and intriguing

process of Kaikeyi's development as a character in four phases: The wife, The

Mother, The Widow and The Crone who introduces these accounts in a Prologue; and

ends the portrayal in an Epilogue on a question mark that looks forward through

the mists of time to the present day.

Syam grips our attention from the very first page, for here is Kaikeyi herself

speaking to us, spanning the thousands of years separating us with the Prologue,

" I " . By selecting the autobiographical technique she seizes the reader per force

and takes us inside this intriguing, much detested character. And what an

unerring touch she uses to evoke our sympathy: vatsalya rasa! Kaikeyi is content

watching her grandchildren play. This is capped with a picture that cannot but

arouse a response - " Grey haired crone with withered eyes clutching at palace

walls " . This soft picture undergoes a complete metamorphosis in the second

section of the Prologue, where the crone transforms into her past queenly

person: ambitious, loving her husband, proud of her sons, glorying in her race.

Since these are qualities in which all humankind shares, she puts before us the

unanswerable question: Why does no one name their daughters Kaikeyi? Syam ends

the Prologue with an answer to this question, which is typical of the character

she brings alive before us: there has never been another Kaikeyi because, in her

own words, " Perhaps I am incomparable " .

Syam paints the child Kaikeyi (she is never given a proper name, and in this

resembles Kaushalya. the princess of Koshala) as spoilt (born after 7 sons),

educated, adept at fencing and riding (because of which she is able to save

beleaguered Dasharatha's life when his charioteer is slain) and keen to be

Queen, not consort. Syam marries her off at 13 to middle aged Dasharatha, with

whose " ravaged eyes and sweet smile " she, strangely, falls in love despite her

dreams of reckless men " Striding across worlds with dreams in their eyes and

Empires lying conquered at their feet and only one Queen by their side " .

Naturally, we find her burning with hatred of timid, devout, correct Kaushalya,

raging to " scratch poison-tipped nails across her smooth face " , unceasingly

praying for her death. In a superb tour de force, Syam turns the tables on

Kaikeyi: " She did not die/ She nursed me through birth pangs " . And it is here

that Syam's creativity catches the eye yet again. She departs from the original

in which Kaushalya gives birth to a daughter Shanta, and instead makes Kaikeyi's

first child a girl, Sarayu, and has Kaikeyi determine to fight for her

daughter's rights to inherit. But it is decreed otherwise, as Syam puts so

epigrammatically: " My child, who lived hardly a month and brought her mother

Sumitra " , as Dasharatha needs an heir. Syam provides Kaikeyi with a biting

comment on male chauvinism: " Did I not want children too? But I could hardly

marry another man to bear them " . Kaikeyi gallops out of Ayodhya in affront,

causing people to shriek and drag children out of her way and spends two months

in Kekaya in agony of separation from her beloved husband, before her

mother-in-law visits Kekaya to ask her to return in her own interest, lest

Sumitra capture Dasharatha.

True to character, Syam shows Kaikeyi grateful for this excuse of

mother-in-law's command to get back to her husband, only this time she does not

return alone. Her foster-sister (daughter of her wet nurse) Manthara accompanies

her. Kaikeyi emerges tactless, not clever like Manthara, although she cannot

abide stupidity, and driven by emotions. And Manthara? She has no hump, but is

so tall ad lissom that the envious Ayodhyans call her hunchbacked, but also

regard her, in their ignorance, as a demoness because her skin is ebony.

Kaikeyi is shown as Dashratha's favourite queen, with whom he goes away on a

second honeymoon after Sumitra is brought to Ayodhya. He does not sped a single

night with the new queen. Kaikeyi exults. But where Kaikeyi would have liked to

poison a co-wife, Sumitra is more clever and wins her compassion by waiting upon

her hand and foot. Beautiful Sumitra with shadows under her eyes a queen born to

serve. So much so that Kaikeyi even sends Dasharatha to Sumitra's chamber one

night, and sleeps peacefully! It is Sumitra alone who keeps in touch with her

after the exile takes place.

Kaikeyi exults in her supremacy and yet is perversely angry that her husband

does not take care of his other wives! It is during this dalliance that the

kingdom is attacked, and Kaikeyi saves her husband's life, permanently

fracturing her little finger in the process and wining two unconditional boons

from her husband. The crooked finger and destiny are shown interlinked in tragic

irony, for Kaikeyi does not even dream the occasion on which she will ask for

the boons, and its terrifying impact.

The insecurity Kaikeyi suffers from because of having two co-wives, no heir to

Ayodhya and lack of faith in the promises of men, despite her love for

Dasharatha, drives her to cling to gems, an obsession which her subjects

criticize: " I loved the glow of colours and brittle shades and shapes the cold

fire in stones " . She loves to be ever glimmeringly clad, every inch a queen both

for the sake of her husband and because of her inner insecurity. Yet there is an

innate generosity of heart in this jealous, possessive, insecure woman, which

makes her, " warmed by his (her husband's) glance " , give Sumitra the extra share

of the sanctified fertility-gifting payesh; which leads her to regard

Kaushalya's Rama as her own son, neglecting her own son Bharata in his favor;

which is seen in her anger at the finalization of the marriages of the sons

without her concurrence, being transformed into a deep love for Sita in whom she

sees a younger Kaikeyi.

Syam alters the story of Rishyashringa and his putreshti yajna into an account

of a nameless ascetic with burning eyes who is sent by the numerous progenied

Kekaya Queen Madhuri, another invention of the author. Syam makes no bones over

Kaikeyi pinning the cause of childlessness on Dasharatha, with a hint that she

alone among the queens is fertile. But for this she has to ignore the

Rishyashringa story, because this sage married Shanta, Dasharatha's daughter by

Kaushalya given away in adoption to his friend Lomapada, King of Anga, much as

Pritha is given away by her farther Shurasena to his friend Kuntibhoja. Dipak

Chandra in his novel on Kaikeyi also pinpointed the cause in Dasharatha's own

infertility caused by his large harem, and portrayed Rishyashringa as a

sage-physician conducting the king and his queens through a year-long regimen of

medicinal treatment to restore fertility and potency.

It is in Section XXI of the poem that we receive a rude jolt when Syam has

Kaikeyi muse on even taking a lover to resolve the impasse of childlessness.

This is grossly anachronistic and spoils the atmosphere carefully built up so

far with great success. Queens taking lovers is a phenomenon foreign to the Epic

and Puranic world of India, and is a medieval development. It is also wholly out

of character with all that Syam reveals of Kaikeyi throughout the poem.

One is also uncomfortable with Syam's sudden use of the Roman " June " sandwiched

between yajna and Payesh. If the month of torrential rains was to be evoked,

surely the mood could have been created far more effectively, in tune with the

ambience of the poem by using the traditional Sanskrit name of the month,

Ashadha?

Kaikeyi's dark side, her shadow-self feeding on insecurity and fear of subjects

rebelling, is Syam's unique contribution to our understanding of this character.

Unknown to Dasharatha, she weaves a network of spies to guard the royal throne -

ever so ironically - for Rama. Again anachronistically, Syam has her pre-empt

Kautilya in selecting wandering beggars, priests, and bored housewives for this

purpose, with Manthara as the go-between. Finding Ayodhya's general Siladitya

(again a name not featuring in the Epics-Puranas) too keen to launch an attack

on a neighboring kingdom, which would inevitably lead to new taxes and arouse

public outcry of which Dasharatha is blissfully oblivious, Kaikeyi turns

Catherine de Medici, and removes the general through a gift of poisoned wine to

his wife. She consistently regards her husband as too uncomplicated a man to

rule intelligently enough to hold on to his inherited kingdom! That is why she

never shares with him the information her spies bring her.

It is Kaikeyi who schools Rama in the tricks of kingship, the need for

hypocrisy, the absolute necessity of prizing the subjects above all for they can

make or break he king. She does not, however, tell him of her spy network, or of

people's emotions being fickle, or of the murders, for she wants to remain the

perfect mother in his eyes. Syam has Kaikeyi (queen and royal mother) put a

rhetorical question to herself, which is brilliant in its incisive psychological

probing:

Is hypocrisy an essential part of motherhood?

Syam sketches with swift simple strokes pen-portraits of the four wives the sons

bring home. This is a major contribution, because Valmiki gives them no

individuality at all, but for Sita. Syam also gives Kaikeyi the credit of

drilling into the princes the necessity of keeping to a single wife - the fruit

of her own experiences - instead of this being a cardinal virtue enunciated by

Rama alone, as has been traditionally accepted.

In Sita, she sees a younger version of herself, possibly because of her doting

on Rama, which replaces her indignation at her favorite being married to a

foundling. Marble-cold Mandavi is the beauty of the family, never leaving the

palace even when Bharata retires to a village, but Penelope-like constantly

embroidering curtains and robes that are never used. Shrutakirti, all life and

laughter, is a non-entity losing herself in Shatrughna, not " lost herself behind

Shrutakirti " (sic.p.81), and remains a mere shadow. Urmila's fiery nature

matches Lakshmana's and " their fights raged/around the palace " . But we miss

mention of her after Lakshmana's from exile. The tragic irony that dogs

Kaikeyi's fate also encompasses the four princes, for none of them has a happy

married life.

It is Kaikeyi who understands the agony of Sita in her chastity being questioned

twice over before cheering crowds by Rama, and her disappearing forever. Kaikeyi

will not be another Indumati - - Dasharatha's mother, who went to Kekaya to

bring back the offended Kaikeyi - because, as she says so sensitively,

Kaikeyi leaves us with perplexing questions that hang !!

Why is Kaikeyi held solely responsible for what happened? Why did no one stand

up against her when she demanded her two boons, instead of

Listening helplessly to Kaikeyi ! As if she was an oracle.

For, could she not be confused too? What were the other two queens doing, the

ministers and the royal priest? Was the personality of Kaikeyi so overwhelming,

her hold on the kingdom so unquestioned that none dared challenge her will till

her own son returned to disobey her?

Kaikeyi proffers two pieces of advice born of the bitter wisdom churned out of

her life's tragic experiences:

Ask questions, my grandchildren,Always.Rule with your hearts.But keep a little

of yourselves aside for life and laughter.

Syam ends her poem on a note of high exaltation and nostalgia, firing the

imagination, evoking echoes of Browning's " Last Ride together " , as Kaikeyi's

memories wing back to her golden days of love:

Two horses galloping With the wind The black-haired woman Impatient, laughing

And the steady warmth in

the man's eyes the love in his voice. Dasharatha.

Syam's poetic genius is characterized by a vivid and fresh imagination.

Kaikeyi's crowned hair is compared to

The brilliance of stars Across black night skies.

Her horse is

Black splendour Galloping - a thunder of black foam Across the blue meadowed

hills.

The most romantic images come in her description of Kaikeyi and Dasharatha's

sylvan retreat in Section XI, where she speaks of the deep woods

Touched with

honey purple

and glistening green,

twilight bathing

skins

Polished gold....

A forest idyll

Immersed in colour deep flowers

And happiness

But her range exceeds this with facile ease in the vibrant, cryptic, sinewy

images thronging the description of war in Sections XIII-XV, as Kaikeyi blazes

through the battlefield, smiling through her terror at the acclaim of victory.

After Dasharatha's death, her inability to feel anything is described, as if she

were marooned on a desert island

Where no feelings

Prevail

Only waves lap the

Silent shores

Endlessly,

 

And to

Grey walls from

which colour

had fled

Closing in on the

memories we

shared.

Seven years after his death, she feels " jagged pain " strike her for the first

time, and sheds her first tears in abject helplessness when Bharata looks

through her, when she demands he send soldiers to help Rama rescue Sita.

She lives on in the city, a detested legend, her isolation and misery

communicated ever so pithily:

While in the palace

Moth-eaten days

Ate time up.

All she has left

were thoughts

Prowling like scavenging

Rats in my

brain.

Yet, the spirit is not dead. Feeling Ayodhya's air hanging heavy with

accusations, she laughs her old laugh and would live again,

Ride

White hair streaming

behind me

gallop away

the fears about

Sita's fate.

The author had wanted to draw Kaikeyi out as " a character in shades of grey...A

warm-hearted, complex woman...Gentle, stubborn, arrogant, confused. A woman bent

on getting her own way even if it ultimately destroys her happiness " . And how

brilliantly she succeeds in this attempt!

Kaikeyi is an undoubted triumph, following hard on the heels of the superb

Kurukshetra, which provided new insights into the psyche of Draupadi, Subhadra

and Bhanumati.

 

Souce Link - http://www.boloji.com/hinduism/057.htm

 

Hare Krishna .....

Hare Rama .......