Review of ‘Mansions of the Moon’ by Shyam Selvadurai | Retelling Yashodhara’s story

Shyam Selvadurai’s ‘Mansions of the Moon’ offers a unique perspective on the story of the Buddha, exploring themes of abuse, unhappiness, and growth.

As is usual with legends, the story of the Buddha revolves entirely around him. Whether it is the Jataka Tales, his birth and sheltered upbringing and finally breaking free to find his path. All others are bystanders.

But Shyam Selvadurai’s Mansions of the Moon offers a different perspective. Selvadurai’s protagonist is not the isolated prince brought up in a cocoon surrounded by luxury. Instead, he is subject to abuse — both physical and emotional — from his father, who resents him for causing the death of his wife. His stepmother Prajapati has no love to spare. She is humiliated by her husband’s concubines and his constant reminders that it was her sister he loved.

What Siddhartha is surrounded by is not luxury but sheer unhappiness of various people. Or as Selvadurai puts it, “people writhing in their suffering like snakes in a pit”. This is what triggers Siddhartha’s search for the cause of unhappiness, not suddenly coming face-to-face with the four signs — sorrow, old age, illness and death.

Selvadurai also puts Siddhartha’s marriage to his cousin, Yashodhara, under the same lens. This is a marriage that is already breaking up. When Yashodhara leaves to visit her mother on her deathbed, she sees it as an escape from her husband and her marriage. Selvadurai’s words, “The world rasps at a marriage, like a knife at a rope”, offer a vision of the slow and painful unravelling.

Apart from familiar characters like Devadatta and Ananda, Selvadurai also paints in the society of those times, the constant tug of power between the various kingdoms, how the poor bear the brunt of natural disasters like drought, and the ways in which forest-dwelling tribes are viewed.

Once Siddhartha renounces the world, Yashodhara believes him to be dead and focuses on bringing up their son. But her world is flung off its axis again, when Siddhartha returns as the Buddha, the ‘Enlightened One’. In Selvadurai’s telling, the story of Kisagotami and the mustard seeds is narrated by the Buddha in Yashodhara’s presence. She sees it as some kind of message for her.

Finally, when Yashodhara and the other women leave Kapilavastu and ask the Buddha to ordain them as ‘bhikkunis’, he refuses. But Ananda’s persuasion leads to a grudging and misogynistic acceptance of women in the Buddhist order. In Selvadurai’s nuanced words, the reader is witness to Yashodhara’s growth from a 16-year-old bride to a wife who cannot understand her husband’s growing fascination with “the truth of truths”, to a deserted wife and mother. Finally, we see a Yashodhara who makes her peace with life and is even able to gently tell her son that he has no place in it.