A brother and three sisters inherited their parents' family business and ran it together. The brother, Dash, ran the business as the CEO , but consulted with his sisters, Kayla, Keana, and Sarah, regularly and each one felt like an equal. Dash knew he couldn't run the business without his sisters, and his sisters knew their own importance within the company and all had large titles to back them up. While Dash had no sons, each sister had one son of her own, all born the same year. As Dash aged, he decided he needed to pick one of his nephews to take over his job of CEO and start training them so he could prepare to retire. Dash trained all of his nephews for CEO and decided to pick whoever he thought was the best choice to succeed him.

After careful consideration, Dash choose Kayla’s son, Ray, to be the next CEO. Everyone in the family was very happy with the choice, as Ray was a hard-working and good-natured man who always treated his employees and clients with respect. After the announcement, the employees were so delighted that Ray was to be their CEO that they decided to throw a big party.

However, there was one person who wasn’t satisfied with the CEO’s choice. Martha, Keana’s nanny, hated Ray. When Ray was only five, he threw food into Martha’s hair and laughed at her, and she held a grudge against the young man ever since. Upset with the CEO’s choice, Martha approached Keana to try and see if she would work to make her son, Bart, CEO.

“I can’t see how you could be happy at this announcement,” Martha said, not containing how upset she was.

“How could you be so upset at this wonderful party?” Keana asked, trying to ignore her. “Ray will make a terrific CEO and my brother chose wisely.”

“He may make a great CEO, but he will make Bart a nobody in this company," Martha lied in an attempt to get her way. "All the hard work that Bart has done for this family will be for nothing, since Ray will completely take over and cast everyone else aside. I’ve heard him planning it myself.”

Keana pondered this for a minute, and started to worry about her and her son’s future. Once she started to worry, she couldn't stop. “Oh, Martha, what should I do? How could I convince my brother to not have Ray be CEO after he’s announced it?”

“Remember the favor he owes you for the disastrous Halloween party scandal? If you hadn’t helped him out that night, this whole company would’ve been in tatters. Cash in that favor, reminding him how much he owes you and Bart will be named the next CEO.”

Keana nodded solemnly, “I will.”

The two women spent the rest of that night on that balcony at that party, planning out exactly how to make Bart the next CEO.

Bibliography: Indian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie, Link

Author's Note:

I chose the read the Public Domain Edition of the Ramayana so my original source story is number 14 from those stories: Manthara and Kaikeyi (Link).

I'm not sure exactly what it was that made me want to rewrite this one but I think I liked how easily Manthara knew how to persuade Kaikeyi to get rid of Rama and then how for the rest of the story Kaikeyi's demeanor changed and how much she stuck to making her son king. For my version of the story, I chose to modernize it, making it a family business instead of a kingdom. There was something about the backhanded trading that really made the family dynamic feel more like a business deal. And I feel like CEO is probably the closest our country has to a king when it comes to backroom politics, which is why I chose to make it a family business.

I also made the King's wives his sisters, since polygamous marriages are not as common in modern times. It also took away the father-son relationship from both of the boys and took it to a more casual uncle-nephew relationship, which I really like. Also, instead of Kaikeyi going against a boy she sees as her son, she's going against her nephew, which I feel is slightly more acceptable. Also, the reason that Manthara hated Rama in some tellings of the story was because he struck her with a toy arrow, which is rather similar to why she hates him in my story. Part of the modernization I did was changing names as well. In this story, Martha = Manthara, Keana = Kaikeyi, Dash = Dasharatha, Ray = Rama and Bart = Bharta.