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Continued from yesterday’s instalment
 The views of Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastriyar have also not been so very good on Kaikeyi. To recall what he said, “The name of Kaikeyi has a sinister significance being applied now among us to a woman who obtains influence by improper means and uses it for improper ends. As told in the Poem, there is no doubt that Kaikeyi was a most unlovely character. She had abilities, talents of a kind, but she abused them for self-aggrandisement. She was by temperament disposed to domineer over people; she loved power and whoever came under her shadow regretted it.”
Therefore, it is obvious that Bharata had observed all this and had formed his own opinion of his mother. And it is this contempt for her that he is expressing in his enquiry that he is making -
“Is my own mother, Kaikeyi, who always seeks to gain her own ends, is violent and given to wrath and accounts herself wise”
- to the messengers who came from Ayodhya to take him back.
There is no clue in the epic to infer that he had such an opinion of her in his younger days. After all, the role that Bharata plays in the Bala Kanda is far, far limited and there is not much scope to show the finer points in this character. From what we see in this scene, we are able to infer what he felt about the three mothers. But it must be intriguing that Bharata, even if he had such an impression why should he express it to the messengers, unless something was troubling his heart? Would anyone of us talk ill of our parent, even if our opinion of him or her were not favourable, to someone not known very much, unless the mind is disturbed?
Bharata’s mind was disturbed at that time. The previous night, that is when the messengers entered the city of Girivraja, Bharata had a bad dream and was quite depressed in the morning. When his friends asked him about the reason for his depression, he states as follows:
 “Hear you the circumstances due to which the depression has overtaken me. In a dream I saw father dejected and falling from a mountain-peak, his hair dishevelled, into a dirty pool full of cow-dung. He was (further) seen by me swimming in that pool of cow-dung, drinking oil from the hollow of his palm and laughing as it were again and again. Then, partaking of rice cooked with sesame seeds and (himself) smeared all over with sesame oil, he took a dip again and again head foremost in the oil. Also in the dream I saw the ocean dry and the moon fallen on the earth and the (entire) globe molested (by Raksasas and others) and enveloped as it were in darkness. I (further) beheld a tusk of the king’s elephant broken to pieces and blazing fires suddenly extinguished. I also saw the earth riven and trees of various kinds withered up and mountains too emitting smoke and razed to the ground.
Young women, dark and reddish brown of complexion, assailed the king, seated on an iron seat attired in black. Nay, adorned with a garland of crimson flowers and smeared with red sandal-paste, the pious-minded king hastily departed southward in a chariot drawn by donkeys.
A young ogress with an ugly face and clad in crimson was seen by me mocking the king as it were and dragging him.”
(Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhya Kanda, Canto LXIX, Sloka 7-16)
‘This is not a good omen,’ says Bharata. “(This prognosticates that) either myself or Sri Rama or the king or Lakshmana is going to die.” (Ibid, Sloka 17)
We will go a little more into this.
More follows...
Hari Krishnan
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