Kavita Kané Collection - Book Review

The stories of already established mythological works from the point of view of an almost invisible character has given way to the contemporary genre of retellings and mythological fictions. Among these, a strong voice has been that of the women who were mere props in the metanarratives that were written with patriarchal ideals.

Kavita Kané’s Karna’s Wife, Sita’s Sister, and Menaka’s Choice are newbies in mythological retellings and fictions. The three books are love stories of side tracked voiceless women in the grand narratives. What the books do is that, introduce the readers to characters that they might not have thought about, like that of Uruvi, Urmila, and Menaka respectively and yet hail them based on the favourite patriarchal feature associated with women, self-sacrifice. The three books have their women protagonists smitten in love and eventually subjugated by it.

In these stories, the storytelling is quite contemporary as opposed to the characters who are eon old. Such a technique makes the mythology available to readers of all age. Although the modern storytelling technique makes it an easy read, the repetitiveness in the narration tests the reader’s patience. For example, Karna’s Wife begins with the contemporary Bollywood image of a brooding hero emerging from shadows into light in a desert but eventually the different characters in the book tell similar tales of Karna being an unsung hero. The blurb claims it to be Uruvi’s story of love, but the text is more about Karna’s friendship and dedication to Duryodhana and his heroism leading to his doom. Uruvi, though a natural healer, is seen working as one quite later in the book while having another similar conversation with Kunti about Karna. It is not the story of Uruvi, as a woman in love but rather the story of Karna’s wife so smitten in love that her life is defined by worrying about her husband's inevitable doom.

Sita’s Sister does an amazing job in bringing out Urmila’s story with Lakshman, instead of focusing on Ram and Sita. The initial encounters between Lakshman and Urmila might vaguely remind one of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet but it doesn’t last long. The story speaks of a love that’s sacrificed for the duties that need to be performed. A couple of times the question of a man’s dharma towards woman is raised but in vain because the duty towards father and the state is always prioritised. In her fourteen years of isolation, Urmila evolves as a scholar while longing for Lakshman’s love. The constant battle of between the ‘selfish’ woman in love and duty-bound wife and daughter in law is threaded with beautiful vocabulary.

The parallel narration of the stories of Menaka and Kaushik in Menaka’s Choice is quite interesting which merge and divulge with the characters union and separation respectively. The book not only gives voice to a formerly voiceless woman but also to a group of women who are doubly oppressed for their occupation as sex workers. It manages to evoke sympathy in the minds of readers towards the life of Apasaras. Yet again, the love story focusses on the greatness of women by their self-sacrifice for a greater good.

With books like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions and Volga’s Liberation of Sita, readers might expect the retellings to tell the story of the woman concerned rather than the repetition of male centric stories through female protagonists. In both these books, the female voices fight their subjugation in their own way rather than hero worshiping the men. The books of Kavita Kané retell the already known stories from the margin without adding any new knowledge or perspective to it. It offers an interesting read to the ones unaware of the myths concerned. However, for an aware reader, the interest remains more in the telling of the story rather than the story which doesn’t offer new insights.