Krishna

  KRISHNA

  KRISHNA

  Life and Song of the Blue God

  Ramesh Menon

  First published in 2006 by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Sales centres:

  Allahabad Bengaluru Chennai

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  Copyright © Ramesh Menon 2006

  Cover design: moonisijlal@gmail.com

  This digital edition published in 2012

  e-ISBN: 978-81-291-2178-3

  Ramesh Menon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  For my parents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The translation of the Bhagavata Purana that I used as my main source for Sri Krishna’s life is the one by a board of scholars, edited by J.L. Shastri and published by Motilal Banarasidass. I am also indebted to Cornelia Dimmit and J.A. van Buitenen’s reader in the Puranas, ‘Classical Hindu Mythology’, published by Rupa Books, for important sections from the Vishnu Purana.

  I used two translations of the Bhagavad Gita as sources for my own rendering of the Holy Song: one is Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s, and the other by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda. I am aware that at times my own version is very close to their translations.

  Katya Douglas edited this new edition of the book, and she transformed the text substantially.

  I must also thank Saugato Mukherjee for proof reading Krishna and Moonis Ijlal for his inspired artwork for the covers of my books.

  “I am neither deva nor gandharva, neither yaksha nor danava. I have been born into your family. This is the only way to look at it.”

  In the kali yuga, the age of evil, when virtue is impossible, only the name of Krishna sets you free.

  – The Bhagavata Purana

  This book is about the life and the Song of Sri Krishna, the last Avatara of Mahavishnu in the dwapara yuga.

  A NOTE ON HINDU TIME

  ‘365 human years make one year of the Devas and Pitrs, the Gods and the manes.

  Four are the ages in the land of Bharata—the krita, the treta, the dwapara and the kali. The krita yuga lasts 4800 divine years, the treta 3600, the dwapara 2400, and the kali 1200; and then, another krita yuga begins.

  The krita or satya yuga is the age of purity; it is sinless. Dharma, righteousness, is perfect and walks on four feet in the krita. But in the treta yuga, adharma, evil, enters the world and the very fabric of time begins to decay. Finally, the kali yuga, the fourth age, is almost entirely corrupt, with dharma barely surviving, hobbling on one foot.

  A chaturyuga, a cycle of four ages, is 12,000 divine years, or 365 x 12,000 human years long. 71 chaturyugas make a manvantara; fourteen manvantaras, a kalpa. A kalpa of 1000 chaturyugas, 12 million divine years, is one day of Brahma, the Creator.

  8,000 Brahma years make one Brahma yuga, 1,000 Brahma yugas make a savana, and Brahma’s life is 3,003 savanas long.

  One day of Mahavishnu is the lifetime of Brahma...’

  PARIKSHIT AND SUKA

  It was the early part of this kali yuga, four or five thousand years ago.

  Great Yudhishtira’s grandson, king Parikshit of the Kurus, had been cursed to die of snakebite in seven days. Pariskhit renounced his kingdom and came alone to the banks of the Ganga. Death was at hand and he had not found his peace. As the sun set, the king sat beside the murmuring river and his mind was restless.

  Before long he saw a crowd of women and children coming towards him along the vivid water’s edge: a motley, happy throng, full of laughter, they were lit by the last light of day.

  As they came nearer, the king saw an unusual figure in their midst who spoke animatedly to them, stroking their faces and at times patting their heads. He looked a boy of sixteen, but Parikshit knew this was no ordinary youth but an ageless rishi.

  He was handsome in a way both wild and serene. His body, clothed in just the wind, was sheathed in a lambency that owed nothing to the setting sun.

  His hair was an unkempt mass of curls, hanging below his shoulders; his eyes were wide and luminous, and his slender arms hung down to his knees. Often he gesticulated with elegant hands to make some bright point to his rapt audience. He was dark, and his smile full of enchantment.

  Suddenly Parikshit knew the youth had come here for his sake. He came smiling before the king and Parikshit bowed at the feet of Vyasa’s illumined son, Suka.

  Laying a hand on the king’s head, blessing him, Suka sat down beside Parikshit. He waved the women and children away.

  When they had gone, and a gilded moon rose over the trees, Suka turned to Parikshit. He said wistfully, “Do you know, O Kshatriya, that nothing brings peace as death approaches like hearing the Purana of Vishnu Narayana? I know you are a bhakta and I have come to you with the Lord’s mystic Bhagavatam, which my father Vyasa taught me at the end of the dwapara yuga.”

  A wave of calm washed over the distraught Parikshit. He said, “Since I was cursed to die, every moment seems like a yawning life to me. Perfect Suka, I long to hear the Bhagavata Purana from you. I am desperate for its peace.”

  And there on the holy river’s moonlit bank, invoking the Blue God who lies upon the sea of eternity, Suka began to narrate the immortal Bhagavatam in his voice that was at once so old and so young. Seven days and nights the deep telling lasted, while Parikshit forgot himself and even his imminent death in the wonder of the ancient lore. As he listened absorbed, his mind’s vision turned inwards and his soul found its natural serenity, and the grace of Mahavishnu.

  It was on the banks of the Ganga that the life of dark Krishna, the eighth Avatara of the Lord, was first told in the world.

  And Krishna’s song, the Bhagavad Gita, the song of God, was told by Suka’s father Veda Vyasa, as part of the Mahabharata, which the elephant-headed God Ganapathy wrote with a tusk he drew from his own face while Vyasa recited the epic poem without pause, never allowing his great scribe to overtake his inspired narration.

  Book One

  ONE

  Purusha Dharmakshetre kurukshetre...

  “Look Arjuna, the Kuru armies!”

  nce, as dawn flushed over the horizon, spilling on to a great battlefield, a Blue God reined in a brilliant chariot there, yoked to steeds like moonbeams. In it rode the finest warrior of that time. On the crack of two ages, between two matchless armies, he reined in the chariot that flew the crest of Hanuman flapping in an expectant wind.

  On Kurukshetra, field of the Kurus, field of truth, he drove Arjuna in the Pandava’s chariot on the brink of the war that would destroy the race of kings forever.

  The God knew his loneliest hour had come. For this hour during the limbo, the yugasandhi between the dying and the unborn age, he, dark Lotus of the world, had been born. He knew this hour would transform the heart of the dreaming, myth-making earth; and it would change him as well in subtle, incalculable ways.

  But now, at this critical hour, he saw his warrior of light tremble. Krishna drew in his horses. He saw anxiety coil round the Pandava, making him moan. Krishna sai
d, “Look Arjuna, the Kuru armies!”

  Suddenly Arjuna knew why he trembled. He did not see enemies before him, but his family. He saw fathers and grandfathers, masters, uncles, cousins, nephews and friends.

  A sob of anguish came from him, “Krishna, my hands shake, my mouth is dry. My body trembles and my hair stands on end.”

  The Pandava swayed like a young tree in a storm.

  “I cannot hold my bow straight, my skin burns as if it is on fire. My mind reels; I see evil omens in the sky. I have never known fear before but I shake with it now. I can’t see how any good can come from killing one’s kinsmen.”

  His own limbs barely still, Krishna composed himself against the terror that beset him at what Arjuna said. He knew his fateful time had come: time of wonder, when he could speak to dim generations of the future. He knew that, now, he could leave them something more lasting than memories of great battles, or even great loves.

  He could leave a few magical words for those who are born, again and again, to suffer and grow in this deep and fleeting world—words of compassion, words of wisdom, of comfort and direction. But words failed him now and Krishna also trembled.

  Arjuna cried, “I don’t want victory. I don’t want a kingdom, its power or pleasures. Of what use is a kingdom, of what use is life itself when my grandfather, my masters, my cousins and my nephews stand ready to fight us to the death? I can’t bear it!”

  Krishna felt forsaken by his Godhood. Lest Arjuna sense his fear, he climbed down from the chariot; his cousin’s every word was a knife in his heart. He stood with his back turned to the Pandava, knowing he couldn’t fail him now.

  Prakriti

  A life ago, it is the second week of spring in Mathura, capital of the Yadava kingdom. King Ugrasena’s garden is in bloom. A breeze laden with the scent of flower, leaf, fruit, and with birdsong, blows through the asoka, bakula and punnaga trees planted both in arrow-straight rows and careful disarray by clever gardeners.

  Scarlet and purple, cobalt and incandescent sunbirds hang in the air like miracles and sip the nectar brimming in the lush mouths of flowers. They never notice the steaming pollen that cling to their fine legs whenever they rest on a petal’s rim.

  Koyals sing in the trees. Peacocks dance, tails unfurled to the heady rhythms of spring.

  Ugrasena’s young wife Pavanarekha is out for a walk in that royal garden. She has become queen just recently and, sauntering among the trees, she is impatient for the king to come to her. She is eager for his caress, his embrace.

  Just then Dramila, a gandharva elf, crystal-eyed, a song on his lips, is flying over the palace on his carefree way, the wind blowing through him. Peering down, he sees the nubile queen. Spring-borne, her hot youth touches him.

  Hovering unseen, a great sunbird over a luscious flower, he sees like pictures before his eyes—gandharvas have this faculty—the naked images in Pavanarekha’s mind that fetch the colour to her face. And he lusts after her.

  In a flash Dramila assumes the form of Ugrasena, as he observes him in his wife’s reverie. He alights in a corner of the garden and strolls up to her, smiling for all the world like her husband. She gives a cry and runs into his arms.

  That garden is made for the king’s pleasure, and no one can see into it except from the sky. The gandharva loses no time in laying Pavanarekha down in the grass under a punnaga tree standing in crimson bloom like a wounded warrior. In a moment he has her clothes off, and begins making febrile love to her.

  In the midst of the tumultuous coupling, as she gasps for the madness he brings to her blood, Pavanarekha opens her eyes. She screams. The gandharva has lost control of his disguise—now he labours above her with his face full of uncanny splendour!

  She tries to push him away. But smiling radiantly, he holds her down without pause in his feverish movements. Until they are both consumed by a climax that wrings another helpless cry from her. He, too, moans and shudders, before he grows still.

  “Who are you, wretched cheat?” wails Pavanarekha, panting.

  Stroking her with unearthly fingers, he says, “You’ve been lucky today, my little flower. I am Dramila the gandharva.”

  But she is beside herself. “Vile immortal, you have defied the gods of the two twilights and violated me like an animal in rut. I was pure and you have ruined me.”

  Arching an arched brow, Dramila says, “You enjoyed yourself. Why are you crying now? Love is forbidden only between mortal men and apsaras, not between human women and gandharvas. I can love you again. Look, I am ready for it.”

  The queen thrusts him away and springs up. She covers herself, and breathes, “I could curse you, Gandharva.”

  Seeing the look in her eye he grows afraid. He knows a curse from a chaste woman can bind him to a mortal life in the world, even a bestial one. He flies up into the air and cries down to her, “My seed grows in you. My son will be king of Mathura one day. He will be daring, brilliant and powerful. He will have no equal in cunning or strength.”

  Pavanarekha wails louder. Before she can stop herself she cries in anger, “Your son will be a monster with no trace of mercy or goodness in him. He will never have the blessing of the Devas or the rishis.”

  He retorts, “My son will be the scourge of your arrogant clan,” and vanishes before she can pronounce the curse welling up within her.

  Kamsa, the gandharva’s son, grows into a mortal enemy of his mother’s people, the Yadavas. He is white as a ghost, pale-eyed, unnaturally tall after his elven father, cold, ruthless, supernaturally shrewd and strong.

  Before he is sixteen Kamsa usurps the throne of Mathura and throws Ugrasena into prison. He then unleashes such a tyranny that many Yadavas flee their ancient home into exile: a fate worse than death for a proud people.

  And the evil that comes to the city will be remembered for generations. It will bring nightmares to the grandchildren of those who stay and endure the rule of that satanic king.

  TWO

  Purusha Yethanna hanthum ichchami...

  rishna, even if they want to kill me, how can I think of harming them? I don’t want this terrible war if it were for the throne of the three worlds. How shall I fight my cousins for an earthly kingdom?

  “How can I dream of being happy by killing Dhritarashtra’s sons? They may be the most monstrous men. But if I kill them I shall be worse than they are, my sin worse than any of theirs. How can I dare spill the same blood that flows in their bodies and mine?

  “Even if they are blind with greed and see no evil in murdering kinsmen, no crime in betraying childhood friends, shouldn’t we who know the sin in this hideous thing, shun it?”

  Arjuna’s eyes burned with anxiety; he was carried away by the frenzy of what he was saying. Krishna tried to find strength to combat the evil that clutched at his heart. He reached into himself, deep within, but his divinity had deserted him.

  Or perhaps, he had himself chosen at some unimaginable juncture to stand exactly thus, just a man now, alone and afraid on this battlefield at a crossroad of the fathomless universe; and face the other enemy within in a duel of the spirit. Krishna knew the price of defeat if he lost this hour.

  Prakriti

  The Yadavas are descended from Soma, the Moon God, and Brihaspati’s wife Tara whom the Moon once seduced. Suka says one of the reasons for Krishna being born into the race of Soma Deva is to kill his demonic uncle Kamsa.

  Another is that Mother Earth, Bhumidevi, Brahma himself and thirty Devas arrive in Vaikunta to meet Mahavishnu. They come to complain about the state of the world and to beg for help. The kshatriyas, who were once given power to establish dharma on earth, have become tyrants.

  Kamsa, who is the Asura Kaalanemi, is the leader of the sinister conspiracy that has such sway.

  A tide of terror and murder washes unopposed over the world; and strangely, the demons themselves long for deliverance. As if to attract their deliverer by the screams of those whom they torture, the innocents they murder, they are on the rampage towards t
he end of the age.

  Bhumidevi came, ineffably soft and lovely, and implored Narayana in her voice of river, ocean, deep jungle and pale mountain, “I cannot bear my burden of evil any more. If it is not lightened quickly, I will plunge down into patala and the earth will be just another precinct of hell.” She wept before Him.

  Vishnu pulled two hairs from his head, one black and one white. He said, “These will travel down the mandalas and remove your burden. The Devas should also be born on earth, in amsa, to join this battle against the Asuras.” And, smiling, “And the apsaras, as well, to comfort me below.”

  Though the reasons for his birth are innumerable, Krishna also comes to hold an unstable world steady, to protect it in a time of upheaval and transition—the yugantara between one age, a dwapara yuga, and the next, this vile kali. He comes to ensure that no power of darkness, nor indeed of grace, survives from a greater age to dominate a lesser one.

  Most of all, he comes to attend a war on the crack of two ages, a war that will destroy the power of the arrogant race of kings, the kshatriyas, for ever.

  THREE

  Purusha Dharme nashte kulam...

  anic-stricken, Arjuna ranted. He was innocent of the deeper, deadlier war his quiet charioteer was already locked in: the intimate war that would decide the outcome of Arjuna’s war, and a thousand others to be fought on the strangest fields, by unborn heroes in impossible futures. For primordial Evil now battled dark Krishna for the soul of Arjuna—that rarest man, an evolved disciple on the brink of final grace.