This week, we’ll continue the story of Prahlad and his evil dad and evil aunt. If you haven’t heard the previous episode you should, because we left it on a cliffhanger. For the outcome to have any effect, it would really help if you knew how we got there.
The character this week has a very special power. In every fight, half of his opponent’s powers are magically transferred over to him. This makes him impossible to defeat. Except by sniper attack.
We pick up the story right where we left off last time.
Holika sat on a pile of logs with Prahlad on her lap. The whole pile of logs was on fire. Holika was protected by her magical firefighter’s cloak that was a gift from my dad, Brahma.
Heera, the boy’s dad had also received a gift. It was that when he died, it would be by neither a human nor an animal nor a god. It would be neither day nor night. It would be neither indoors nor outdoors. He would not be killed by either Astra or Shastra which are Sanskrit words for projectile weapons(like arrows and missiles) or handheld weapons(like swords and spears). He would not be killed on the ground, or in the sky or in the water.
The flames continued to rise around them. Heera watched on with glee. This was a win-win for him. If Vishnu showed up trying to protect Prahlad, this was his chance to have a showdown. He had no doubts in his mind that he’d be able to defeat Vishnu. Thanks to the wish Brahma had granted. On the other hand, if Vishnu did not show up the world was better off without one Vishnu devotee even if that devotee was his own son.
As the flames rose he couldn’t see much of what was happening.
Inside, Holika was calm and undisturbed, the magical cloak around her. Prahlad was calm too. You’d wonder why. He was in the hot seat quite literally. He continued to pray to Vishnu.
Suddenly there was a sudden gust of wind.
Where did *that* come from? wondered Holika, but not for long, because her cloak was blown off of her. In a physics-defying situation quite like in the Final Destination movie series, the cloak miraculously wrapped itself around Prahlad. Yup, that wind was freakish alright. Before Holika could do or say much, she burned. The flames that had taken a long time to build up now accelerated and quickly burnt Holika to a crisp.
Heera had been expecting his sister, but when his son stepped out of the ashes instead Heera was angry. He was a stereotypical villain but even he loved his sister. He decided she must be avenged.
This had to be Vishnu’s doing. He walked off in a huff.
The next day he decided to set up another trap for Vishnu. He poisoned the boy’s milk. But like in the old song about Rasputin, Prahlad “drank it all and sat up fine”. It was still Vishnu behind the scenes.
All the poisonous particles magically evaporated out of the glass of milk. This wasn’t really physics-defying. Quantum mechanics tells us that it is not impossible for all the poison molecules to suddenly behave that way, just highly unlikely.
But as you have already seen, stretching the rules of physics is Vishnu’s specialty. And so Prahlad was quite safe. For now.
Next, an angry elephant was brought over to trample the boy. People around the court were gasping at the sight of the great animal rushing towards the boy. Just then yet another freakish thing happened, quite like the Butterfly effect. On a nearby tree, a squirrel was carrying a nut back home. As it jumped to its branch, the sun which had been behind a cloud suddenly peeked out. The sunlight glanced off of a nearby soldier’s shield and reflected exactly into a tiny spot where the squirrel was, momentarily blinding it. The squirrel stumbled, the nut rolled off. As it fell down on the ground it slowed down and when it finally stopped it nudged a loosely positioned piece of rock. The rock dislodged and rolled a short distance downhill. A very short distance but just enough to be in exactly the elephant’s path. The elephant stumbled and fell before it could reach the boy. Prahlad muttered a silent prayer of thanks to Vishnu.
Heera was losing it now. He next put Prahlad in a room full of snakes. But this was just a move out of ignorance. Vishnu and Snakes have a special relationship – if Heera had actually bothered to do some opposition research, he’d have known how Vishnu rests on Shesh Naag, and how in every avatar Shesh Naag had aided him.
I’ve covered more of Krishna’s relationship with Snakes in Episode 11 “The boy who lived”.
There wasn’t any furniture in the room and it looked like Heera intended to keep the door locked all night, so the snakes made a nice bed for Prahlad to sleep on.
I must say Prahlad had guts of steel throughout this. Despite dodging one bullet after another, he was not in the least bit panicking. He had utter faith in Vishnu. Well, it was my coaching, it had to work!
Heera had lost patience. Now after trying to hurt his child in every way possible and failing every time, he finally did what he should have done at the very beginning. He had a conversation with Prahlad.
He asked outright – “Why do you still worship Vishnu?”
And Prahlad replied “Vishnu is all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing”
“Ok, then where exactly is Vishnu?” asked Heera “how can he see everything when he’s not even here?”
“He’s here,” said Prahlad
“Where? I don’t see him” asked Heera
“He’s in everything around us” was the boy’s reply
“Even in this pillar, here?”
“Sure,” said Prahlad
Heera smashed the pillar with one hand. He was powerful enough to smash a marble pillar to bits with his bare hands. “See no Vishnu here….” Heera started to say and stopped.
Because when the tiny pillar cracked from inside it emerged a huge creature. Taller than any man, and several times wider and broader than the pillar had been.
This was quite a person! He had the body of a human giant. And the head of a ferocious lion.
Everyone was scared stiff. The lion-man picked up Heera like he weighed nothing and dragged him to the door of the palace.
He lifted Prahlad’s father off the ground, to about chest height and dug his sharp nails into Heera’s body like it was made of butter.
As Heera’s breath left him he realized what had happened. The lion-man was neither a man, nor an animal, nor a god, but all three to some extent. He was neither on the ground nor in the sky. He was at the threshold of his palace and was neither completely indoors nor outdoors.
It was twilight so it was neither daytime nor nighttime. And the lion-man had used neither a projectile nor a handheld weapon. His wish had come true.
The lion-man was actually Narasimha which literally translates to man-lion. This was Vishnu’s fourth avatar and his fiercest.
Prahlad who had already shown wisdom at his young age went on to rule the Kingdom
That’s it for this story.
Notes
As I mentioned last week, Holika is the reason we celebrate the festival of Holi. As it happens this festival is tomorrow. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a spring festival in India that involves a lot of colors. The night before Holi, which is basically tonight – people make a bonfire not in celebration of Holika’s death, but in celebration of the divine intervention that allowed Prahlad to escape.
At this point, we’ve covered many of Vishnu’s avatars.
We’ve covered Matsya in Episode 1 – “Unicorn Fish”, Varaha as Character of the Week in Episode 9.
We’ve covered a small fraction of Rama and Krishna’s stories.
We still have several to cover including Vaman, Kurma, Mohini, Buddha. And we have to cover Parshuram in more detail as well.
But by far the Narasimha avatar is the most violent of Vishnu’s avatars.
Prahlad went on to do a *lot* more after this. But his adventures in later life are worthy of an episode of their own.
Here are some pictures of Narasimha:
Narasimha’s statue at Halebidu in Karnataka
Narasimha statues in Cambodia
Narasimha at Hampi
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Character of the Week
The character this week is the most powerful person ever. Sort of like Apocalypse from the X-men movies. Vali from the Ramayana has a unique power. In every fight, battle or contest, Vali automatically receives half of his opponent’s powers. Together with his own powers, which are certainly not negative, this makes Vali impossible to defeat.
If you want to guess how he got this power, I give you one guess. And as I’m sure you’ve got it right, it was my dad again Brahma who gave him this power
Vali was impossible to defeat if you faced him in battle. On the other hand, a well-placed sniper might be able to hurt him. And that is exactly what happened. But I’ll not give away too many details since we have not yet reached that part of the Ramayana yet.
Vali was a monkey king, ruler of the kingdom of Kishkinda and older brother of Sugriva. Vali was easily the most powerful being on the planet, defeated pretty much everyone including Ravana, the chief villain guy from the Ramayana. This is the point in the story where I make an entrance. I was passing through Ravana’s court one day and happened to carelessly refer to Vali as the most powerful being on Earth. That was enough for Ravana to want to prove a point. I warned him against it, but Ravana went off to challenge Vali.
Yes, Ravana had a lot of superpowers from Brahma but the fight had only one possible outcome since Ravana lost half of his powers to Vali the moment he challenged him.
Vali made quick work of Ravana and held him captive in his …. wait for it….. armpit. Yes! He did. Ravana was obviously tapped out at this move. He asked Vali for friendship, and Vali gladly accepted. He didn’t have many friends and badly wanted some.
What happened after that is a story for another day. I’m also going to do an episode on Taara at some point. She was Vali’s wife and had just as much as if not more interesting backstory.
That’s it for this week.
Next Week
Next week we’ll go back into the world of Akbar and Birbal. We’ll see how one can stay warm despite being in the middle of a freezing lake all night, and also see what the term “slow cooker” really meant in medieval India
The character next week is the sister of Ram and Laxman. Most people are unaware of her and for a good reason. She doesn’t appear in most versions of the Ramayana
I’ll see you next week!