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Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
I am Kaikayi. The same Kaikayi who sent her stepson Ram to an exile of 14 years in deadly forests, infested with the dangers of devils and rakshasas. My daughter-in-law Seeta had to face the harsh consequences of this forced exile. My stepson Lakshman almost lost his life in the battle fighting the strong army of Raavan, the King of Lanka. I insisted on the coronation of my son Bharat instead of the most deserving Ram. And to get all this done, I tricked my husband Maharaj Dashrath by using his two blind commitments to me. He lost his life out of grief. This is all that is mentioned about me in Ramayan.
Thus, I was a wicked and selfish woman in the story of Ramayan and in Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas.
Was I a bad woman when Maharaja Dashrath proposed to marry me? Did I ever differentiate between my own son and his three stepbrothers? Was I so cruel that I let my husband die for my own demands? Was I not concerned about the well-being of our kingdom?
Unfortunately, no one ever asked these questions! Neither Valmiki nor Tulsidas. And none of the millions of readers of their works. I remained branded as a bad woman for so many millennia. Today I want to speak up. Please listen to my grief and my version of the story.
Mahendra Arya
Mahendra Arya is a bilingual Indian author who writes in English and Hindi. He has written across a variety of genres including poetry, plays, fiction and religious texts.
His published non-fiction books include Yaaden, a book compiled by him in memory of his grandfather and Beliefs of Arya Samaj, a very useful guidebook to understand Arya Samaj. His published fictions are Facebook Friends and Tangents and A Circle, both of which are thrillers that keep the readers spellbound till the last page.
He has written several plays and most of them have been staged in Mumbai. His most popular plays are The Paying Guest, Studio Six, Colonol’s Den, Floating Resort, Badi Haveli and The Party.
Kaikayi: The Misunderstood Queen is a new direction given by the author to understand Ramayan with a new perspective. This perspective is derived based on certain indicators from Maharshi Valimiki’s Ramayan and is used to explore the story through Kaikeyi’s perspective.
