Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel
Kaikeyi follows the villainess queen of the Ramayana. Stepmother to the god Rama, Kaikeyi is best known for using her power over her husband to banish her stepson into the forest for 14 years so her own son could ascend the throne. As such, Kaikeyi is traditionally portrayed as the jealous, wicked woman who sends an innocent man into exile.
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel goes too far in the opposite direction to salvage Kaikeyi's reputation and legacy. Instead of the cartoonishly evil portrayal Kaikeyi has traditionally been relegated to, Patel makes her almost saintly by modern standards. Kaikeyi is the first feminist of her society, chafing against the sexist restrictions of clerics and kings alike. She campaigns for women, from her fellow queens to servants and tradeswomen. A little hard to believe is that no other women have set any sort of precedent for Kaikeyi to follow. Kaikeyi's ideas are always presented as the first of their kind. She is the first queen to hold a women's council, the first to serve as her husband's councilwoman, the first to pushback against the rhetoric of clergymen.
In reality, the Kaikeyi of mythology would have had a number of female role models, from goddesses to figures like Gargi Vachnakavi, Lopamudra and Maitreyi, as well as real-life queens like Queen Migavati and Kumara Devi.
Harder to swallow is the glacial pace of the plot and the dearth of fully realized secondary characters. The background characters feel there only to fuel Kaikeyi's realizations of how unfair society is. The prose is competent but basic, bereft of the beauty and lyricism I've seen in other retellings.
Kaikeyi's criticism of conservatism and sexism is spot on, though Patel's choices in order to show the strictures of a sexist society are occasionally baffling. She gives Mandodari, the wife of Ravana, an offscreen death. In reality, Mandodari survives the Ramayana and in a blatant pushback to the sati (widow suicide) tradition at the time, remarries.
I appreciated Kaikeyi's portrayal of an aromantic asexual woman and can only hope there will be more representation in that arena.
Overall: competent, with a worthy message, even if it inches there.
