Chapter 12 — Manthara

From an upper room of the palace, Manthara looked down upon Ayodhya and saw a city altered by expectation. The roads had been washed. Lotuses and flowers lay scattered upon them. Flags and banners rose above the buildings, and people moved with freshly bathed heads and festive purpose. Music and voices rose from streets below like the sound of a celebration already underway.

Manthara had long lived with Kaikeyi's household as a kinswoman-attendant. Her standing was bound to the queen's: she herself would later say that Kaikeyi's rise would be her rise, and her danger Manthara's danger. She was not a figure of fun, and no spell moved her. What moved her was her own reading of the household. She saw the city, wanted to know why it rejoiced, and went to ask a nurse standing nearby.

“Why is Kausalya giving wealth to so many?” she asked. “What has made the king and the people so glad?”

The nurse could scarcely contain her pleasure. On the next day, she said, Dasharatha would install Rama as yuvarāja.

At this news Manthara's anger rose quickly. She went down from the terrace and found Kaikeyi resting at ease. Her first words were not gentle.

“Wake up,” she said. “Danger is coming toward you, and you lie here as though your good fortune could never change.”

Kaikeyi looked at her with concern. Manthara's face was troubled, and Kaikeyi asked what had happened to her.

Manthara answered that disaster was already moving through the house: the king was about to install Rama.

Kaikeyi rose with delight. She gave Manthara a fine ornament, bright against the unadorned urgency Manthara had brought into the room, and thanked her for bringing such welcome news.

“I see no difference between Rama and Bharata,” she said. “Why should I not be happy? Rama is the eldest son of the king. He understands duty, is truthful, grateful, disciplined, and fit for the office. He will protect his brothers and those who serve him as a father protects his children. And he has always served me with special care—more than Kausalya herself.”

She expected Bharata, in time, to receive the inherited kingdom after Rama. To her, the coming installation promised security for the whole family.

Manthara threw the ornament aside.

“What joy is this?” she demanded. “You are standing in the middle of sorrow and calling it good fortune.”

Her argument came in stages. A kingdom, she said, could not be held by all a king's sons at once. Once the eldest was established, his line would follow him. Kausalya would rise above the other queens. Bharata, already far away in his maternal family's country, would be separated from the one brother who could protect him. Lakshmana's devotion to Rama was known to everyone, and Rama's affection for Lakshmana was just as strong. Manthara claimed that Bharata would have no such safeguard.

These were predictions, not knowledge. There was no proof that Rama would harm Bharata; Kaikeyi herself had just said the opposite. No old injury lay behind Manthara's certainty, and no curse or power outside herself. But her own position was joined to Kaikeyi's, and she spoke as though the future were already present. She named Kausalya as a rival who would remember past slights. She insisted that a son who lost rank after knowing royal comfort would be ruined. She told Kaikeyi that Rama's rule would leave Bharata dependent, sent away, perhaps destroyed.

Kaikeyi listened. The affection she had expressed for Rama did not disappear from the scene. It made the change more severe. Yet Manthara's words worked upon her fear for Bharata, her place in the household, and the unstable future Manthara had drawn before her.

At last Kaikeyi said, “Tell me how Bharata may gain the kingdom and Rama may not.” Nothing had verified what Manthara foretold. Kaikeyi had chosen to act on it anyway.

Manthara then recalled an old battle. Dasharatha had gone with Kaikeyi to aid Indra against an enemy in the south. In the fighting the king had been carried from danger and, though wounded, had been saved by Kaikeyi. Pleased by her service, he had granted her two boons: she could claim them whenever she wished. She had left them unused.

“Claim them now,” Manthara said. “Ask that Bharata be installed in the rite prepared for Rama. Ask that Rama be sent away for fourteen years.”

She gave Kaikeyi a method as well as a demand. Let her enter the anger chamber: a room to which a royal woman withdrew in grievance, making her refusal to be ignored impossible. Let her remove her ornaments, lie on the bare ground, and say nothing until Dasharatha had promised to grant what she asked.

Kaikeyi accepted the plan.

She took off necklaces, garments, and ornaments that had marked a queen at ease. She entered the anger chamber with Manthara, cast aside what remained, and lay upon the uncovered floor. She said that either Rama would go to the forest and Bharata would receive the kingdom, or Dasharatha would be told that she was dead.

Outside, the city continued its preparations for Rama's installation.