Kavita Kane’s latest, Bhima’s Wife, chronicles the tale of an overlooked woman in mythology: Hidimbi. Long before Draupadi, she was the first wife in the Pandava family, yet never fully acknowledged as such. Though she held the rightful place of the eldest daughter-in-law, she lingers as a forgotten presence—a wife, a queen, and a woman pushed to the margins.
A rakshasi by birth and a queen by right, Hidimbi saved Bhima, bore his son, and remained loyal to a family that took her brother’s life. When war arrived, she gave up her only child, Ghatotkacha, for a cause that never truly accepted her.
In this reimagination, Kavita Kane brings her voice forward, telling a story shaped by love, betrayal, strength, and sacrifice.
Book Excerpt: Bhima’s Wife
The Two Wives
She continued to pace up and down for several seconds.
Pausing in her prowling, she asked, ‘Is that how you bear the humiliation inflicted on you, Hidimbi?’ Her voice was calm, but her eyes glowed mockingly.
Hidimbi sat motionless, her hands clenched. She replied, tonelessly, ‘You are part of that humiliation of mine, Draupadi.
Yet, you are here now, a guest in my home.’
Draupadi couldn’t meet her steady gaze. She said, ‘I camehere as I know what disgrace, dishonour and degradation is!’
Hidimbi leaned forward, her hands now so tightly clenchedthe knuckles showed white. ‘My ignominy lies in being Bhima’s unacknowledged wife. Your ignominy was in the grandeur of being the Pandavas’ queen.’
Draupadi shut her eyes, her hands crossing her breasts.
‘I was sung, you were unsung, yet both of us had to bear thelast dregs of humiliation. We undeniably have overlapping oppressions which position us in different ways; and both of us strive to fight it. The seeds of women’s truth is never allowed to grow in freedom.’
Hidimbi gave a short laugh. ‘But still most would like us to be rivals: me as the jealous, unappreciated wife and you, the arrogant one whose sense of self-importance does not flatter male egos. The world is more interested in the ugliness of a royal family feud than in recognizing uglier issues like our injustice. Or ignominy. That was probably why Bhima didn’t wish us to meet.’
Draupadi smiled wanly. ‘But I was very curious to meet you.’
‘Why?’ Hidimbi raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘To check on the lowly mountain girl, the rakshasi wife?’
Draupadi looked indignant. ‘Mountain girl?! You are the most progressive and independent woman I have seen. You dared to disobey your brother, you chose your man, you dared to fall in love outside your community, dared to express it, dared to propose to him, dared to tell his formidable mother…”
Hidimbi could not hide a short smile.
“….that you wanted to marry him, dared to have a child with him, dared to raise the child as a single mother,” she paused briefly, casting her a searching look. “Moreover, you are politically savvy, leading your clan, dismissed otherwise as the despicable rakshasas, but you give them purpose and pride. By uniting the warring tribes, you have maintained peace and harmony in the forest that people once dreaded to enter. And above all, you have groomed your son to be the future leader ofyour people and this land.’
‘Because I knew he would never be accepted as the heir of the Kurus despite being the eldest grandchild,’ observed Hidimbi, with an involuntary shrug. ‘Frankly, that was the sole reason I preferred to stay back in the forest. To give my son his due—rather he be prince in his land than an unwanted son in Hastinapur.’
Draupadi found the colour rising up her neck, momentarily awkward. She reached out to Hidimbi; her soft hand in the calloused one. ‘I wanted to meet that proud woman whose dignity is worth praising as without a drop of tears or self- pity, you accepted your decisions, despite so many restrictions imposed on you. All this shows you as a true woman of enormous strength and dignified womanhood.’
Hidimbi stared at Draupadi, her eyes dark with wry irony. ‘Dignified womanhood? Possibly I was not arrogant inthinking I am so special, so superior, so different!’
Draupadi flushed. ‘Is that what you think of us?’
Hidimbi gave her a hard, unrelenting look. ‘Power is complex, largely situational. Power is dynamic, forceful, echoed through the people in privilege and position. I have borne that; so, have you. But our endurance is often mistaken for weakness. It’s what you think of lesser women like me who are so often socialized to silence,’ said Hidimbi, with acerbic alacrity. ‘But I shan’t stay silent where my son is concerned,’ she added warningly.
Excerpt from Bhima’s Wife by Kavita Kane; published by Penguin India.
