Kaikeyi Asks What Sin Has Brought This Sorrow
Ayodhya Kanda, Doha 20
Doha 20 · Movement 2 of 2
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Kaikeyi looks across her life and finds no remembered wish to harm another. She has loved the royal household without imagining herself surrounded by enemies.
Now unbearable sorrow seems to have fallen upon her all at once. She asks what hidden sin has caused fate to deal such a blow.
The grief is real even though its cause is false. Once imagination has convinced the heart of approaching ruin, the body suffers an event that has never occurred. Kaikeyi begins searching karma for an explanation because Manthara's fiction has acquired the weight of destiny within her mind.
A sorrow born from falsehood feels so real that Kaikeyi searches her whole life for the sin that summoned it.
Read the passage from the Manas
अपने चलत न आजु लगि अनभल काहुक कीन्ह। केहिं अघ एकहि बार मोहि दैअँ दुसह दुखु दीन्ह।।20।।
In all my life I have never wished ill upon anyone. For what sin has fate dealt me such unbearable sorrow all at once?