Episode 11 – The boy who lived

No, its Harry Potter. Instead it’s Hari – a name for Krishna who is another avatar of Vishnu. 

We have encountered Krishna once before as Subhadra’s brother in Episode 6. 

Krishna’s life is roughly divided into 4 parts. The first one paradoxically doesn’t feature Krishna himself much, its more about his parents, his uncle, his foster parents. The second one is his childhood. Then adolescence and finally adulthood. Like most of the rest of us, these are very distinct phases in Krishna’s life and puts a different perspective on his actions. 

We start off with a brother and sister. Kansa and Devaki. Kansa was a tyrant of a king but he was nice to his sister and seemed genuinely happy during her wedding to Vasudeva. That is until he heard an announcement from the sky. It sounded like it might have been someone sneaking in to the control room and misusing the public address system, but control rooms and loudspeakers didn’t exist back then. So Kansa did the only logical thing. He believed the voice completely even when it said the 8th child of this couple would kill Kansa.

Darling sister no longer, he immediately pulled out his sword and would have succeeded in making her a widow on her wedding day. But Vasudeva was a great negotiator. He promised to deliver to Kansa his and Devaki’s 8th child.

Kansa wasnt completely dumb.

“Not child, children. What if after the 7th child, Devaki has twins? Or triplets?”

“In fact, what if she had octuplets the very first time”

Affronted at the suggestion – Vasudeva retorted “She’s not an octopus and neither am I. I can assure you we will have human children”

I was passing by and felt the need to interfere – “Octuplets aren’t baby octopii they are a set of 8 babies born all at once, twins of twins of twins if you will. In fact what if this wont even be her first child? How long have you been dating my sister exactly?”

Vasudeva wanted to get off of this uncomfortable topic. “Alright then, you can have all the children. We’ll lead the rest of our lives normally. We’ll just have to be content with children #9 onwards then” Devaki wasnt happy with the arrangement but it was better than seeing Vasudeva killed.

At this point both Vasudeva and Kansa seemed satisfied and were about to shake on it. 

It was most terrible then for someone to let slip a stupid remark. And that someone was me. I couldnt keep a secret remember and I had a traumatic past or rather traumatic future(see episode 0). So when I said something as innocent as “oh its so nice to see you both get along, especially after all the lying and treachery between your grandparents”

Kansa froze. So, so it was your grandmom who stole my grandpa’s teddy bear! I didn’t want to believe it. Now you’ll pay for this. He put the couple in jail.

Now if Kansa had beheaded Vasudeva or even just put them in separate cells he would have been guaranteed immortality. No 8th son by the couple could have been born.

But the man had an ego. No way am I going to let people say I ran away from a fight with a baby.

Pretty soon, like clockwork the couple had one baby after another. And like clockwork(but not like chronos) kansa would kill the babies.

When the 7th child was about to be born, the gods decided to pull a switcheroo. They moved the baby from Devaki’s womb to Rohini’s. Rohini was the another wife of Vasudeva and more importantly she was not in jail. Her child who was transferred to Devaki sadly met the same fate as his or her half brothers.

Then the 8th child was about to be born. Kansa canceled all his state visits and golfing trips. He had to be around for this one. It was important. Bigly.

One evening the baby was born. Time stood still. Not just figuratively  but literally. Everyone and everything was frozen, except for Vasudeva. 

His chains slipped off too and the iron bars opened up. And No he didn’t suddenly get Doctor Strange’s or Magneto’s powers. And in case you were wondering what time freeze looks like or what iron bars and chains coming apart looks like, the effect was indeed pretty much the way its shown in the Dr. Strange and X-men movies.

The gods had given Vasudeva a sign. He knew what he must do.

He quickly picked up the baby and walked out of jail and went to Gokul, a little village near modern day mathura. He had to cross the raging Yamuna river in heavy pouring rain. The river and the rain couldn’t be frozen of course because that might upset the whole water cycle. 

Vasudeva was wading or swimming across the river clutching the newborn to him. Even where the river was deep he managed  to hold up his infant son just above the water. Because cold rain may be terrible for the baby but it was better than swimming.

It was pouring cats and dogs. And because the baby was a divine one, he had a divine umbrella- and that umbrella was a 5 headed snake called Vasuki.

Finally Vasudeva crossed the river and reachedGokul. In the dead of night he stole in to the house of a cowherd nanda baba. He exchanged Nanda baba and Yashoda’s baby girl for his own son and returned swiftly without stopping to chitchat.

He rushed back and soon time unfroze.

The guards were informed, Kansa came by. 

Give me your baby.

Now kansa, first agree to grant us our freedom.

You dont have a bargaining chip here. You’re the one in jail. But sure, give me the baby and you’re free. Out of the magnanimity of my heart, I will pardon you and release you from prison.

Vasudeva handed over the baby.

Kansa immediately attempted to kill her, but the baby slipped and fell out of his hands. Curiously she fell upwards. And she laughed at him and spoke in an adult human voice – you fool you think you can kill me? Said the baby who was an avatar of the goddess Yogamaya. The 8th child of Devaki and Vasudeva lives she added. And then stopped when out of the corner of her eye she saw Vasudeva vigorously shaking his head.

The baby disappeared. 

Kansa flew into a rage.

Meanwhile Vasudeva was trying to make the best of a bad situation. Guards you heard your king, I gave him the baby, untie me pronto.

No thundered Kansa.

You will rot here forever. Oh balderdash! And stormed off in a huff.

Vasudeva was just as angry as Kansa for an entirely different reason. I went through all that elaborate fuss for nothing. If it’s that easy for the gods and goddesses to escape Kansa, why did I have to walk all the way to Gokul crossing the river in the pouring rain and risking hypothermia?

Or they could have just transferred the baby like they did with Balaram.

Who’s Balaram?

Our seventh child said Devaki. I could tell – for one moment the child disappeared from my womb and then a different child appeared. I think the gods pulled a switcheroo. They must have found it hard to add the other baby first and then remove Balaram. It was like for the briefest moment I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

Vasudeva should have complained about why the gods didn’t simply switch Krishna and Yogamaya. But he seriously doubted his wife. There there dear, it’ll all soon be fine.

Meanwhile Kansa gave orders to his staff to find all the children in his land who had been born that day.

And in Gokul, Nanda baba and Yashoda woke up the next day. They were both fairly surprised to discover that the daughter they had put to bed the last night was now their son.

This was a sign from the gods surely, who are we to question their judgement they thought and continued on with their lives, cowherding and  milkmaiding.

We’ll leave it here this week. We’ll continue again in a couple of weeks with Krishna as a child.

Some notes on the show.

You may see a strong parallel with Greek mythology here but that’s not a strong link. Prophecies, especially those proclaiming death by a baby are very common all over the world.

If you’ve been playing scratch off bingo with Vishnu’s avatars you might already have a winning combination. 

We’ve already covered matsya, Varaha, and we’ve touched on Rama.

But dont worry, the Rama and Krishna avatars which are the ones we’ll cover most extensively are both huge.

But all this talk of 10 avatars is subjective anyway. For example one school of thought is that Balaram was an avatar of Vishnu too, but those same schools reject the idea of Rama’s brothers ticking up the avatar counter.

If you ask me, and you should ask me, given my credentials as a genuine mythological character myself and the son of Brahma the creator holy trinity, Vishnu is not limited to just 10 avatars. Avatars usually come in packs of 10 pack at local celestial Walmart which may have lead to some misunderstanding.

To prove my point, there’s Mohini too, which is definitely an avatar of Vishnu, but which doesn’t factor into most people’s count.

The character of the week

Jatayu is a vulture. He’s also the nephew of the Garuda who was our very first character of the week in this podcast.

Jatayu when he was young used to love flying competitions with his brother – Sampaati. The two  would try to fly faster and higher than each other. Until one day, Jatayu was flying higher than was safe. He was high enough for the Sun’s rays to burn him, however before that could happen, Sampaati intervened and shielded his brother. In the process, Sampaati’s wings were burned and unfortunately he spent the rest of his life flightless. He was lucky enough to survive as is.

Later in life, Jatayu was living in a forest, as most vultures do. In this forest, he observed an abduction in progress. Without giving too much away, since we havent covered that part of the  Ramayana yet, Jatayu intervened and fought the abductor, who happened to be the supervillain of the Ramayana. This was an aerial battle since Ravana, the super-villain had a flying chariot. Ravana had enormous powers, thanks again to Brahma, my dad, and quickly managed to win that contest. We’ll meet Jatayu again when we get to that part of the Ramayana.

Next week

Next week we’ll do a story I came across recently which reads like a mashup of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and a story of a doll coming to life – Kinda like Annabelle or Chucky, but maybe not as evil.