Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Hindu epic Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. It begins in Kaikeyi’s childhood, when a brutal disruption leads the princess to seek the help of the gods to put things right again. That help is not forthcoming, but what Kaikeyi discovers about herself in the process transforms her life. She ceases to be the overlooked only daughter of a king and becomes a woman who will do anything to make a better life for herself and other women.

I am woefully ignorant of the Indian literature that captures the myths and legends of Hindu gods and heroes. I have heard of the Mahabharata, in particular the Bhagavad-Gita, but I haven’t read it. The Ramayana tells the story of Prince Rama who spends 14 years in exile after his stepmother Kaikeyi persuades his father King Dasharath to banish him. Patel recalls in her author’s note how her grandmother would tell the story as one of Kaikeyi’s cruel jealousy, prompting Patel’s mother to interject and frame it as Kaikeyi helping Rama to fulfil his destiny. Across the breadth of evolving retellings of the Ramayana, Patel was never able to find any stories from Kaikeyi’s perspective, noting that “much of her life is simply a blank space in the original epic.” So she decided to write her own.

I was interested to read it having read one of the recent retellings of Greek mythology from the perspective of a female character. I didn’t enjoy Madeleine Miller’s Circe, as explained in my review, but a friend’s review of Kaikeyi made me ask if I could borrow her copy.

Patel builds a world that, for all its magical elements, feels real. The rivalry between Kaikeyi and her twin brother Yudhajit captures the difference in this world between sons and daughters of royalty. The remoteness of her parents and consequent closeness to her maid Manthara sets up the trajectory for what comes next. Kaikeyi’s character is one of determination. I liked her from the opening pages, enjoying her clarity of thought and desire to be someone other than who society dictates she should be.

Her father King Ashwapati has banished her mother Queen Kekaya on spurious grounds, and Kaikeyi turns to her mother’s library to seek a way to secure her forgiveness and return with the help of the gods. The prayers she finds on the scrolls in the library get her nowhere, but an ancient text offers a technique for “Summoning the Power of the Gods by Concentration Alone”. Soon, Kaikeyi can slip into another plane where she has the power to manipulate the thoughts of those close to her. She tests her power on her twin and on Manthara with low key success, before deciding to use it to dodge out of a dinner with her father and a visiting warlord so that she can read more in the library. She hopes to find an explanation for the power she has unlocked in herself but instead finds additional power by focusing her mind through meditation. It is a lesson in self-reliance and self-confidence that is the first step in her transformation. Her first act made me smile: she chooses to reject the schooling in the arts that all royal women undertake in order to fulfil their role as accomplished helpmeet to their more important husbands. It made me smile because this is a theme that appears in novels about women who break the societal rules across centuries of writing. My thoughts turned to Pride and Prejudice, with the Bennett girls expected to sing, play the piano, dance and have just enough conversation to capture themselves a husband. As for Austen with Lizzie Bennett, so too for Patel with Kaikeyi. Independence of spirit and thought is key to Kaikeyi’s story. I thought, too, of The Diary of Lady Murasaki, which describes the talents a woman at the Japanese court in the Heian era was expected to have, from blending perfumes to writing haiku off the cuff, talents she wove into the narrative of The Tale of Genji to flesh out the women wooed by the Shining Prince.

As Kaikeyi builds her knowledge of court life and learns about warfare from her brother, I thought about other powerful women who have had fictional works made about them, like Catherine the Great, who has been reimagined in Tony McNamara’s tv show The Great, and the Empress Dowager Cixi, who is depicted in the novel Empress Orchid by Anchee Min.

Kaikeyi has to be ruthless. She realises that she has nobody but herself to rely on, that even her twin sees her as second class because of her gender. The plane she is able to enter is known as the Binding Plane, a place where her connections to others are visible as cords or threads, manifestations that thicken as she grows closer to someone or that wither if the relationship becomes damaged. I loved the descriptions of each bond, its colour and strength, and the way it vibrates with emotion or lies still with compliance. In the moments when Kaikeyi tests a bond to its limits or chooses to break it, the visual of it shattering or snapping is a strong one.

Kaikeyi’s father marries her off to a neighbouring Raja, Dasharath. She is to be his third wife. His two other marriages are childless, and Kaikeyi extracts a promise from him that, if she bears him a son, the child will be heir to the throne, no matter where in the pecking order he sits. Her early months in the kingdom of Kosala are difficult, but eventually Kaikeyi finds her feet. She accompanies Dasharath into battle, proving her worth as a warrior. He rewards her with a place on his council, and she begins her work to improve the lives of women across the kingdom.

I was curious about this aspect of the story, as it felt very modern and was clearly an allegory for the strengthening of conservatism in the US in recent years. Kaikeyi earns freedoms for women which are resisted by the sages who claim to know the will of the gods and the correct ordering of society. The setting for the story is around 1000 BCE. I don’t know whether attempts to smash the patriarchy were a thing back then or whether Kaikeyi would have been able to use her influence in court to do the things she does, but I enjoyed this imagined aspect of her life.

Time passes and still no children have been born. Dasharath decides to hold a ritual that will cleanse him of the gods’ displeasure and reverse his infertility. A visit by the god of fire Agni during the ritual reveals that Kaikeyi is god-forsaken, and nothing she does in supplication to the gods will work, but that this is for a purpose that Agni will not reveal. Agni also effects the simultaneous pregnancies of all three wives, giving Dasharath an instant brood of four heirs. Rama, son of his first wife Kaushalya, is the first-born, Kaikeyi’s son Bharata is the second, and twins Lakshmana and Shatrugna, sons of his second wife Sumitra, are third and fourth. Kaikeyi reminds Dasharath of his promise to name her son heir and, privately, he agrees, although he makes no public announcement.

Around the same time, Kaikeyi has her first encounter with Ravana, the King of Lanka, who is part demon and gives Kaikeyi a scroll that teaches her how to expand her power within the Binding Plane to increase her influence on the ruling council. Her increased abilities inside the plane contribute to how the rest of the story plays out. Ravana visits the court a second time later in the novel, when Kaikeyi lets slip that her gentle son Bharata will become king, in an attempt to assure Ravana that there will be no tensions between Kosala and Lanka in the future. Not knowing the Ramayana, in some ways I missed out the prickling of knowing something a character in the story doesn’t, but at the same time my lack of knowledge made what transpires delicious in a different way. As with a good mystery, I had a moment of realisation about Ravana as pieces of the story slotted together later in the narrative.

The gods have other plans in regard to who will take on the throne of Kosala. On a trip to repair bonds with the kingdom of Kekaya, where Kaikeyi’s twin Yudhajit is now king, a shocking truth about Rama is revealed. It has far reaching consequences. As the boy grows up, his power increases and his assumption that he will be king after his father goes unchallenged. Kaikeyi has to make peace with Dasharath going back on his promise to make Bharata his heir, and to be fair to her, she can see the sense in it. Rama’s true nature makes him better suited to the role of Raja than Bharata’s does. Decision made, a marriage to Sita, princess of Videha, is sought for Rama in order to strengthen the bonds of loyalty between the two kingdoms.

Sita and Kaikeyi have something in common; they are each god-forsaken. Kaikeyi quickly realises that Sita is to play an important role in Rama’s destiny. When Rama succeeds in the challenge set for all Sita’s suitors, it confirms the matter. At the same time, it makes an enemy of Ravana, who is also amongst the suitors, besotted with Sita and angry that he could not win her hand.

There’s a section of the story that feels pertinent to the world we live in now. Kosala is reliant on trade with other regions for grain. Not only is grain farming not a strength, but the harvest fails due to a lack of rain during the monsoon season. A kingdom on the far southern border is refusing to trade sufficient grain, and a malevolent force in the wilderness on the border is disrupting the passage of the trading caravans. It made me think both of the Russian war on Ukraine that has disrupted the supply of grain and gas to Europe, and of the impact the Houthi militia is having on trade routes through the Red Sea as a consequence of Israel’s war on Gaza. Across history, when there is an imbalance of power, when the leader of one nation wishes to expand their sphere of influence or destroy a group of people they find offensive to their view of the world, not only is harm done to the people having war waged on them, but the rest of the world suffers in some way, too. The sadness of these situations is that it is more often the economic harm done that forces a reaction rather than the killing of people.

A battle with evil follows, enemies are vanquished, but this doesn’t restore balance in the kingdom. Worse is to come, and Kaikeyi feels responsible for what happens, wondering whether her actions have made the inevitable happen sooner or whether this was the only path, one set by the gods in which the notion of free will is illusory.

Wrapped around the serious messages within this book is a true ripping yarn. Kaikeyi is a magnificent warrior queen and the supernatural elements and battle scenes add excitement and tension to the story. There is humour and humanity in the relationships between the main characters and the storytelling is so assured that, although I wanted to take a couple of days off work to immerse myself fully in the world Patel has created, reading in short bursts and snatched moments was still satisfying. I found the novel compelling in the way Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was compelling.

Read 02/01/2024-15/01/2024

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