This week, because of a special request from Daivik, who is a regular listener we’re going to talk about my dad! My dad is Brahma, the creator of the Universe.
If you’ve been following this podcast, you must know by now how my dad, Brahma, is incredibly easy to please. He goes about granting wishes to pretty much every bad guy ever. Occasionally he did that to the good ones as well. Like Manu in the very first episode “Unicorn Fish”.
Besides unintentionally helping out baddies, my dad did do a few other things. We must give him credit for creating the entire Universe. He was also up to pranks occasionally, and we’ll see a bit of that in the first story today.
In the second story, I’ll explain something that may have puzzled you. Brahma is considered part of the Holy Trinity, together with Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. That might make it seem like the three of them are on par. But that’s not quite how things are.
If you look around the thousands of temples in India, none of them dedicated to Brahma. Except one in Rajasthan. Today, we’ll see why.
Our story begins at Vrindavan. If you’ve heard earlier Krishna stories, you might know that Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. When his evil uncle tried to kill him as an infant, the boy was secretly swapped out into a little village where he then grew up in anonymity. His uncle did find out that the boy survived. So he sent demon after demon to kill Krishna. Krishna defeated them all, even as he was doing what regular other boys did in the village. And that included taking care of the cows and sneaking a little butter here and there.
After having defeated the most recent monster that Uncle Kansa had sent his way, Krishna was relaxing by the banks of the river along with the other cowherds.
Balaram, Krishna’s brother was taking bets on what might be the next evil monster to come their way. He was offering a 5-2 odds on giant crab, and 3-2 for a bird with sharp teeth. There were no takers. The other cowherds knew Balaram had divine powers himself. He was either another avatar of Vishnu, or he was an avatar of Vishnu’s Shesh Naag or Ultimate Snake.
Since Vishnu knew and orchestrated everything, and since Shesh Naag’s body pretty much controlled the flow of time, a bet against either of them was not going to be a safe one.
There wasn’t actually any monster headed their way it was just my dad. He decided to pull a prank. This wasn’t April Fool’s Day or anything. My Dad simply has an unusual sense of humor.
As the cows were wandering about, he made them disappear. Krishna and his other cowherd buddies did not notice until it was time to go back home. Frantically, they all searched everywhere. Krishna noticed after a while that he seemed to be the only one looking for the missing cattle. As he glanced around he realized that his cowherd buddies had disappeared too!
The village would be devastated. Every boy in the village was minding the cows here today and not one remained. Except for Krishna.
Time wore on. Given the lateness of the hour, now the villagers walked to the edge of the meadow and anxiously waited for their cows and their boys to return. Finally, everyone came back, the cattle and the boys. All of them. But it wasn’t the real boys and the real cattle. Krishna had not yet found everyone that disappeared. Instead, he took a shortcut. He created substitute cowherds and cattle with identical appearances and complete with intact memories. This is surely the earliest example of cloning and the first example of a brain to brain direct data transfer.
Things went on fine for a whole year before Brahma even noticed that his plan had failed. And when he did, he was shocked. He thought maybe he just hadn’t put the cows and the cowherds to sleep properly. When he checked his cryogenic sleep chambers and saw all of them there sleeping peacefully, he realized how ridiculously ineffective his plan had been. He’d sought disruption, but Vishnu in the form of Krishna had easily smoothed things over.
Repentant, Brahma sought out Krishna. Brahma said normally he would apologize for the inconvenience, except Krishna wasn’t even inconvenienced.
Brahma took a little bit of solace in the fact that he was still a member of the Holy Trinity. He asked Krishna “That does give me special status, doesn’t it? It was not like there is anyone else who could create anything”.
Just then something came flying through the air towards them.
“Oh about that….” said Krishna as an oddly familiar person walked towards them.
“Howdy, chief!” said the stranger to Krishna saluting, “Universe #2340753. I’m just here to deliver the daily report. Everything’s going well. We’re just getting to the dinosaur phase. The next report is after the comet strikes. I’m continuing to run a little low on Iron and Gold on my Earth, so my next focus will be to create some Supernova class stars nearby”
And then Brahma suddenly realized what was going on, and why the stranger had looked so familiar.
“Is he me?” he asked Vishnu, even as more and more Brahmas started showing up for their daily reports. Some Brahmas looked similar. Others were a completely different culture, gender, or brand of humor. Some had 20 heads, some had a single one. Some had animal heads. Others wore younger, older.
One fact was clear. They all were lower in the pecking order than Vishnu the preserver. As this became clear to the Brahma from our own Universe, he walked away, not with any resentment but a deeper understanding of his purpose and that of the Universe as a whole.
Our second story explains why there are hardly any temples dedicated to Brahma. Once as the members of the Holy Trinity were sitting around idly chatting, Vishnu had an idea. “Hey guys, how about a contest? We’ve heard plenty of tales of Shiva in supersize. Let’s see it in action!”
Shiva was happy to oblige. He immediately expanded in all directions growing bigger and bigger and ultimately he’d grown so much, that Vishnu and Brahma couldn’t even tell whether he’d stopped growing.
“Let’s do this” continued Vishnu. “Let’s each race to one end and see who comes back first. Keep an eye on the odometer so we can measure Shiva that way. Remember to take a selfie at the end!”
They zoomed off in opposite directions, Brahma headed for where the head had been, and Vishnu towards the feet. Beyond a point, Vishnu just had to give up – he’d traveled for millions of light-years and he still hadn’t found Shiva’s feet!
When he returned back to where he’d left Brahma, he found Brahma was already there! Vishnu admitted to Brahma that he hadn’t actually found Shiva’s feet. And Brahma revealed something from behind his back! Ta-da! It was a petal from a flower that they had both seen on Shiva’s head earlier!
It appeared Brahma had gotten the better of Vishnu this time. Except it wasn’t the truth. Brahma didn’t actually say he had reached the top of Shiva’s head, but he cleverly implied it.
Shiva’s voice thundered down from above. Then as Shiva shrunk back to his normal size he exclaimed – “No way Brahma, I was watching the whole time!”
Caught like that, Brahma had to admit he had not been telling the whole truth. Yeah, he actually hadn’t reached the top. But the damage was done. Appropriately, it was decided that someone who left out important facts in order to win small bets probably did not deserve to be a role model to humans on Earth. Since then, no new temples were built dedicated to Brahma even though you’ll find Vishnu and Shiva temples all over.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
There are many more Krishna stories we’ve covered on this podcast including a comparison to Harry Potter that you might find remarkable. Check out Episode 11 – The boy who lived, and Episode 13 – Nurse Ratched and Umbrella Mountain, Episode 33 – Uprooted, as well as the Character of the Week Segment in Episode 18 – Monkey Business
That’s all for this week.
Next Time
In the next mini-episode, we’ll meet a popular character we’ve encountered in this podcast before. He’s a reanimated corpse, often approximated to a Vampire or a Zombie. Besides hanging down from a tree in a cemetery at night time, they don’t have much in common with Vampires. And with a Zombie, the only thing this creature has in common is that they are both dead.