We feel her pain when her twin brother, Yudhajit, tells her she's more a brother than a sister to him: “Don’t take offense. In her absence, Kaikeyi decides to develop herself as a warrior.
Patel begins her novel with the wrenching moment when young Kaikeyi, only daughter to the king of Kekaya, wakes up to find her mother has been banished with no explanation. Patel recasts the Ramayana as a power struggle between women who want to participate in politics and public service and men who would rather they stay home, obedient and subservient. A pivotal character, Kaikeyi demands that Rama be sent into exile to delay his ascent to the throne. She was one of the most despised queens of Indian mythology, pitting herself against the gods in the epic poem the Ramayana. Writing a book like Kaikeyi, you’re taking the reins on that force and you’re trying to steer it a bit.As mythological women like Circe and Ariadne find their ways onto the bookshelves, here comes a reimagining of Kaikeyi, an interesting antihero. They shape societal mores, and therefore individual thinking, in ways that we don’t even always register. Julie Sternberg: Religious and cultural texts, like the Ramayana and the Bible, for example, just an almost immeasurable societal power. In this conversation with Eve and Julie, Vaishnavi relates why she became fascinated by Kaikeyi’s story how her research led her to surprising evidence of feminism in the Ramayana source material how she’s handled backlash from people who “believe in some sort of Hindu supremacy” and who deem her novel a threat and why the novel in fact strengthened her relationship with Hinduism, as well as the connection of some of her readers to their Hindu faith.
asks, What if she had reasons for doing what she did? What if the story was a little bit different and we can understand her actions rather than them just being spur-of-the-moment jealousy, which is what we get in the Ramayana?” Vaishnavi’s novel “tells the story of the evil stepmother character, who sets off the whole epic by exiling Rama, and then just sort of disappears. What is it like to create a modern, feminist retelling of an ancient, foundational text? Vaishnavi Patel-author of the instant New York Times bestselling novel Kaikeyi, a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Ramayana-paints a vivid picture in this episode of Book Dreams.
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