Forbidden love has forever been the domain of pining, so when the Pandav prince Bheem catches the eye of rakshasi Hidimbi, sparks do fly. Between a demigod and a demoness, it may as well be an inter-species coupling, being as unnatural as that.
Author Madhavi Mahadevan takes the ancient epic tale of an expedient short-term wife—one who was perhaps a clever war strategy by a farsighted fugitive queen—and exposes the tender beating heart of the romance in The Forgotten Wife: The Story of Hidimbi and Bheem. Mythology lands Mahadevan in familiar territory.
If the Kunti of The Kaunteyas imbued her backstory with a confidential tone, Drishadvati in Bride of the Forest: The Untold Story of Yayati’s Daughter is the hapless heroine who finally takes fate into her own hands. The innate bravery and practical feminism are carried forward in The Forgotten Wife. This too has a strong female-centric narrative, which relooks at a bygone time with modern sensitivity and lets hitherto underplayed characters shine.
The marginalisation of a niche population peaks in the story of Bheem and Hidimbi’s son, Ghatotkach, who is neither here nor there—his blood divided down the middle into the blue from his royal side and the dubious red of his maternal lineage. Born to die on a battlefield, he is constructed as a pawn to higher powers. A hybrid, he is the one who must suffer the consequences of the abrupt love between his parents.
But first, the passion that culled him from carnal boldness. Do the gods really think rakshasas are ‘ugly, unkempt, unpleasant, untamed, uncivilised, inhuman’? When Hidimbi, whose mother had loved a gandharv (celestial being), first sights her Vrikodar—the name Bheem gives her for himself—“there is also the fragrance she gives off, wanton as the elusive airs of spring. A scent contrived to create ardent longing. An open invitation to all healthy males…” This love is covert, but their marriage, which Hidimbi craves for and Bheem tries to avoid, is sanctioned by his family: “Beyond the falseness of words, the unasked questions and all those barriers that give birth to differences, what works is touch.” Bheem is seduced and thus starts their story.
The ensuing separation and the birth of their only son Ghatotkach, whom she cannot stop from seeing the war as his fate, and her enemies as his kin—“I am not the same as other rakshasas. I am their blood,” he says. To which she retorts with a mother’s prescient knowledge: “A half-blood. You will fight their wars, but when you are sacrificed, your death will not be a loss to them.”
Destiny manipulates this desire between the lovers, but it also neatly divides them when the time comes. Hidimbi is left with a lament—of a wife and mother. In a language most exquisite and compassionate, Mahadevan’s telling mines the rawest feelings of a rakshasi who loved and lost—love for the wrong man being the greatest equaliser among women.