I am Manthara.. Not so commonly known as Dudunbhi & Kuni. But I guess few know that. The name I have become famous by is less a name, more a swear word: forever doomed with ignominy. So be it. I write this, not to clear my name, but in the vain hope that someone somewhere understands me.  

I am cursed to be remembered always on a bad note.. For nobody has been able to look inside my heart and no one has ever tried to understand the reason behind my deeds, oh sorry, I mean misdeeds..!!  I was easily made the accused or rather a scapegoat and a dark character full of wickedness and negativity in the great mythology where people are either God or rakshasa... but surely not humans.

Is it a crime of such gigantic proportions to want your grandchild (ok not biologically... But I will come to that later) to be the heir of the throne so much so that nobody even cared to notice the love and affection I had for kaikeyi and her adorable son?  Kaikeyi was a motherless child although some have the temerity to say that it was me who manipulated her father to send her mother away.. Wow!  Talk about rumors!!  I was an ugly looking hunchbacked maid with no notice-worthy feature on my face or in my physique... Why would the wise king of an empire send his beautiful wife away because of me?  Does it make sense?  To me it does not, nor would it make sense to anybody who knew the king and his queen, and their relationship.

But unfortunately, they were not the people the”Gods” wanted to have the opportunity to write history! And so the ugly lady with no Royal background was to be blamed for most (if not all) of the mis-happenings where she happened to be present!  I was more of a bad omen to myself than anyone else who chanced to be around me.

No one even questions why a wise king of a vast empire would be foolish enough to send this old, ugly and deformed maid with his daughter after her marriage had I been so crooked and evil, when he could have his pick from among young, beautiful and healthy girls?

I am sure you are still looking for some reason that would justify the fact that I was evil!

Had I been so evil would I have been able to take care of Kaikeyi like my own daughter?  Or would that child have had so much of affection for me if I were really evil?  (For children are supposed to be super sensitive, objective and have a perspective... It's only when we grow up that preconceived notions,  values, traditions, beliefs and God knows what else these areas of the adult mind get occupied with,  thereby minimizing those abilities which we all have when we are young). Not to say that this is a hypothesis originally mine - I am sure that people would have conducted much more research and many more experiments to help prove this seemingly obvious but normally unnoticed phenomenon.

The one ”good” breakthrough one of my supposed misdeeds made was sending Lord Rama to the jungle and hence I became an aid in creating the situation where Rama got the opportunity to kill Ravana - an increasing threat to the Devtas... reemphasizing the glory of the so called noble over so called evil; but, as I said before how could a poor ugly lady be given so much of credit.. So obviously, it had to be the Goddess Saraswati who was on my tongue when I incited Kaikeyi.

But where was this Saraswati for the rest of my life when I was doing other evil things??  Why did Saraswati not stop me?  Or are the “Gods” so selfish and insecure that they happen to care only if there is a threat to their power and glory? Who is the real culprit in this case then?  Me or the “Gods”?

I had no family of my own, though, I overheard some people gossiping about my imaginary family. Kaikeyi and her child were the only family for me. Oh how my dear Bharat looked all the more adorable when he ran after me calling out ”Granny Granny”... And my beautiful brave and wise kaikeyi who always was so clean from the heart and clear from the tongue.

She loved her stepson more than her own.. Bharat and Shatrughan also adored Rama.. And I do not blame them, for he was the most perfect child a mother could ever dream of..  let me not deny the fact that I too was fond of Rama. I still had the desire to see Bharat my notional grandchild as the heir of the throne.. Very natural and definitely not a non-human feeling – guess you all have felt varying degrees of such an emotion!

And yes, this old lady was wise enough to guess the fact that Bharat would not allow himself to be the king till the time Rama was there in front of him, in plain sight. So it was necessary for me to send Rama not only far away but also for quite a long time... So I coaxed Kaikeyi and the rest is history... I know I became selfish and blind in love... But did anyone bother to question how I benefited from all this?  I also knew that one day or the other Kaikeyi would realize that what she did was wrong for Rama and would eventually come to hate me and I might be chucked out of the luxury and comfort of the palace forever... But I was ready to pay the price it might be, so long as I knew that my Bharat would be the undisputed king of Ayodhya...

Have I not paid enough price and suffered enough torture and humiliation that even now, my name is always used as a curse or a cruel sarcasm..?  Does anybody say that oh look that lady loves her children as Manthara used to do? No.

Where are the people who justify everything by saying love is blind or rather everything is fair in love and war?  Does that not justify my action?  Why, because I was not on the side of the gods? I was acting human?  So what if that one mistake of mine resulted in killing of the entire Rakshas clan!!  I am after all MANTHARA.. And will always be.. An ugly hunchback old lady about whom history did not bother to mention beyond that!

Pic Credits: B P Banarjee [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons