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Continued from yesterday’s instalment
 What started as a very ordinary woman endowed with enchanting beauty, tasting power by being the most favoured queen of Dasaratha and did not hesitate to ill-treat others because of her pride and also adamant and audacious attitude had only one virtue in her, namely, her immeasurable love for Rama and she was fortunate to be considered as his own mother by Rama.
To sum up, her love for Rama was so strong that she didn’t listen to Manthara, her counsellor, until she was threatened of four things:
Rama, the born enemy of Bharata would banish the latter and might even go to the extent of putting him to death in order to ensure that there is no threat to his kingdom. Lakshmana would not have a problem because he was close to Rama and therefore his mother Sumitra was relatively safer.
Kaikeyi had wronged Kausalya earlier and now that Rama became the king, Kausalya would take revenge on her.
Kaikeyi would have to be dependent on Kausalya even for giving alms to those who came to her.
More than anything else, the position of the king of Kekaya would become critical because Janaka was his enemy. Janaka, who was observing restraint because of the fact that Kekaya was the father-in-law of Dasaratha, would be emboldened after the death of Dasaratha. In case of a war between Janaka and Kekaya, Rama the king would naturally support his father-in-law, Janaka, rather than the father of his stepmother.
This feeling of insecurity was behind her unyielding attitude, even at the risk of losing her husband, to press for the enthroning Bharata and exiling Rama. Her selfishness was so strong that she did not even inform Bharata of the death of his father and instead started enquiring about the welfare of her own kith and kin, when Bharata returned to
Ayodhya.
The fact that Bharata was not prepared to accept the throne was a matter of rude shock for her. She was looking forward to her son feeling happy about her conniving to get the throne for him. But she miserably failed to gauge the heart of her own son. From that point onwards, the Poet shows signs of changes taking place deep in her heart and soon we see her joining all to bring Rama back. We see that she went of her own accord, without anyone asking her to accompany them. She went with them, though she could have chosen to remain at the palace. On the way she was subjected to terrible humiliation by Bharata in the presence of all. She suffered this punishment silently and without showing the agony that his son’s words would naturally have caused her.
 When Rama told Bharata very firmly that he should undergo the exile for the prescribed number of years to maintain the sathya of his father, we found Kaikeyi as well, among others, weeping and shedding bitter tears at not being able to coax Rama to come back to Ayodhya. And, when Rama returned to Ayodhya, she was genuinely happy that Bharata rendered the kingdom back to Rama and that’s why the Poet calls Bharata as Kaikeyi nandhavardhan, for the first time. The only earlier instance when this epithet was used was by Rama.
Thus, once again Ramayana shows a very ordinary character rising to greater heights. A few more words on Kaikeyi before we move over to another odd character, Maricha.
More follows...
Hari Krishnan
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