But the novel has faced enormous backlash too, mainly from Indians and Hindus hailing from South Asia. Critics have said Patel rescues Kaikeyi from ‘ the pantheon of wicked stepmothers’ in this novel. For all purposes, it has been the myth book of the season. Kaikeyi has been nominated for several prizes and hit the NYT bestselling list in the first week of its release. But we are getting ahead of ourselves because Kaikeyi is the queen who exiled him. In his exile, he goes on to defeat the evil king Ravana. So obviously, I, being an agnostic Hindu reader from South Asia, was beyond excited for its release.įor the uninitiated, Ramayana is one of the two staple Indian Epics every Hindu kid grows up with, telling the story of Rama, reincarnation of God Vishnu, who is exiled for fourteen years by one of his father’s wives, hellbent on making her son the king. The author implied she has critiqued casteism too. In the vein of Circe and other Greek retellings, it claimed to give voice to the vilified queen of King Dasharath, and use Kaikeyi’s arc to examine the South Asian patriarchy rooted in Hinduism. Hailed as a fiercely feminist retelling of the epic Ramayana, Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi hit the shelves with flair, destined to be a bestseller. Inosh K Rukman on Kaikeyi - an exercise in white feminism.
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