In this episode, we’re going to talk about the churning of the Ocean! It was an experiment on the cosmic scale. It involved pretty much every major God you can think of, including all 3 members of the Holy Trinity – Brahma the creator who is also my dad, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer! And not one but two avatars of Vishnu!
Let’s dive in!
Our story begins with Indra the King of the Devs, relaxing and enjoying his time in heaven, doing generally nothing much. Just living life, you know, King size. He had the usual party crowd at his grant party with Apsaras who’d kicked off their shoes and taken to the dance floor, Gandharvas rocking it on stage, which itself was decorated with giant size balloons.
I was at the party too. I’d volunteered to belt out a few tunes on the Veena, but Indra wasn’t having any of it. He just wanted me to have a good time.
So I preferred to focus on the huge cake that never seemed to get smaller no matter how many slices I ate, and the bottomless drinks that really were bottomless because the bottoms of the cups were all invisible. And they refilled magically.
There was also a magic wish-fulfilling tree in the corner, but there was a bit of a queue. There always is. That tree could grant just about anything. And that made it extremely popular every time there’s a party here.
Normally, I’m always aware of what’s about to happen. You probably know by now that I have knowledge of the past, the present, and the future. I do need to consciously apply a switch in my head to think of the future. But this time I was focused too much on the delicious cake.
And I let my guard down. If I had instead thought of the future, I could have seen disaster coming and at least warned Indra or Airaavat.
Over all of that party noise, the doorbell rang and soon the butler announced an unexpected visitor. It was Durvasa. That alone shot off a hundred warning bells in my head. I’ll tell you why.
If there’s one person whom you don’t want to cross, that is Durvasa.
He’s a Rishi who finds every possible excuse to be angry with you and has an above-average high curse magnitude index. A dangerous combination, given how trigger happy he was.
Here’s an example. If Durvasa visits you, he’ll probably curse you if you’re not around. And if you’re in the house, he’ll probably curse you for wasting a perfectly nice day outside. He’ll eat all your food and then curse you if the toothpick you provided was slightly bent.
As an example, he cursed Shakuntala’s husband to forget her in Episode 37 – A Fishy Engagement, just because Shakuntala took a while to answer the doorbell.
Just those experiences should have terrified everyone present! Mostly it did, except for Indra.
Indra was the King of the Devs, and to him, Durvasa was at best an equal.
I could tell Indra was just taking this guy far too lightly. But I was too far away across the room to warn him.
Durvasa suddenly spoke up loudly “Indra, I’m going to give you….”
Here it comes I thought.
But I was genuinely surprised when Durvasa said “this gift and he handed Indra an amazing looking flower garland”
“Oh come on, you didn’t have to,” said Indra, even as he quickly grabbed the garland from Durvasa. He had a look and “oh its real flowers, as opposed to precious stones cut into flower shapes” he said. “Okay Airavat put this away please,” he said half-heartedly as he tossed the necklace to Airavat
Airavat wasn’t your usual party animal. He was an elephant, and as such Indra’s means of travel everywhere.
When Indra tossed him the necklace, Airavat tried to catch it. But he should have used his trunk. Instead, he tried to catch it with his front legs. As you can imagine, that crushed the garland completely.
Durvasa who had been observing all this, now decided it was time to step in.
He could see Indra had become extremely arrogant, treating gifts with disdain. He’d disrespected the garland
Indra would have to learn humility.
Durvasa put on his gauntlet with the colorful shiny stones on the back, and snapped his fingers.
In an instant everything was transformed! We were all teleported and showed up on some kind of beach. Indra tried to teleport back but he couldnt. His palace, his staff, his gifts, even his wish fulfilment tree. They had all disappeared,
And Indra had become an ordinary mortal now. And so were all the Devas.
This was heartbreaking for the Devs. Not in the least because it meant no more parties!
Indra wanted to do something about it to get all of his stuff back but couldn’t think of what. I put in a bit of friendly advice here.
“Hey have you thought of talking to my dad, Brahma the Creator? You know how he’s always itching to create something? Maybe if he’s in a good mood he could probably create it all back for you.”
“Splendid idea Narad! When I get back all my stuff I promise to make you the guest of honor at the next party. You’ll get a reserved parking spot, and the first shot at the tree”
“Sure,” I murmured. I could see clearly that was not going to happen but that didn’t stop me helping out. I did think Durvasa had been a wee bit unjust here.
Indra together with the devs visited my Dad. I didn’t go along. You know how sometimes it makes you uncomfortable to have hundreds of your friends visit your home? Besides I had places to be, songs to sing.
The conversation with Brahma was short, it turned out. Brahma could not actually create any of those things. Well he could, but were they prepared to wait for let’s say a few billion years? Did Indra realize how long it had taken to create all of those in the first place?
And when Indra suggested that maybe Brahma could create other Brahmas who could then create other Brahmas who could makes parts for assembly, thereby exponentially reducing the time required, Brahma didnt like the idea.
Recently a few episodes ago, he had had a demonstration from Vishnu about how he was not the only Brahma around, and that there was a Brahma in every universe and that had jarred him. To think that he would have to share his own personal universe with many other Brahmas was a bit hard to digest.
Brahma told the Devs that that was not going to work out. And that they should talk to Vishnu the preserver!
Well, so that’s where the party of hundreds of Devs went. I knew they were arriving, yeah foresight and everything. So I’d dropped by to speak to Vishnu. This was going to be exciting!
Indra and the Devs arrived at Vishnu’s home. And Vishnu’s home is basically like a luxury yacht. That’s because its inside the coils of a giant snake that floats in the Ocean of milk, or Kshirsagar. The snake is Sheshnaag, whom we’ve encountered before on the podcast.
Vishnu heard Indra and the Devs out, though he already knew what they were going to say. I wonder how he manages to be patient through all these sorts of conversation.
Anyway, Vishnu asked Indra if he really really wanted everything back
“Of course” replied Indra.
“What are you willing to do to get everything back?” asked Vishnu
“Anything, I’ll do anything!”
“Will you churn an Ocean with a Mountain and a Giant Serpent?”
“Yes” replied Indra.
“And accept anything that comes out of it? Good and bad?”
“Yes!” chorused Indra and the Devs
“And collaborate with the Asuras?”
No one replied. This should not be surprising. The Devs and Asuras were constantly at war with each other!
Indra swallowed hard and finally said “Fine! I’ll have my secretary setup a parlay with Bali. We’ll start with that”
Vishnu smiled, and moved to his Avatar cupboard and looked through a few curious looking tiny bottles. He read a few labels. “Hmm, Matsya, I thought I threw you out”. He tossed it away and vaporized in mid air. Yes, Gods dont need a trash can.
“Okay, this requires two bottles not one” he said. One of them was labelled Kurma and the other Mohini.
He also pulled out a blueprint labelled the LHC – Large Hill Churner. It showed a huge and tall mountain on the back of a turtle, definitely not a hill.
We’ll leave it here but we’ll continue the story mid week as we’ll see how a fragile truce can be made even with your deepest enemies. We’ll also see how Vishnu the Preservers can preserve the truce when it starts breaking down. But just long enough to achieve objectives
Some notes on the show
Durvasa is the meanest kind of house guest you can imagine. He’s most people he’s met.
Some high-profile victims of Durvasa include Shiva the Destroyer, Krishna himself, Goddess Laxmi, and Goddess Saraswati, and Laxman from the Ramayana.
Occasionally, he has done a good thing here and there though. For example in the Mahabharat, he was responsible for giving Kunti a phenomenal superpower. Which she did use to continue her dynasty.
We have previously met Shesh Naag or Ultimate Snake as the Character of the Week in Episode 13 – Nurse Ratched and Umbrella Mountain
These are previous episodes featuring Vishnu’s avatars:
Matsya – Episode 1 – Unicorn Fish
Varaha – Character of the Week on Episode 9 – A clever Minister in King Akbar’s court
Narasimha – Episode 20 – The Aunt from Hell and Episode 21 – Final Destiny
Vamana – Mini-Episode 37.5 – Vamana
Parshuram – appears in Episode 16 – Six….teen Flags
Ram – Episode 7 – Kingdom by Horse
Episode 15 – Rishi vs Rishi: Un-civil war!
Episode 16 – Six….teen Flags
Episode 30 – Banished!
Episode 41 – Forest Life
Krishna – Episode 11 – The boy who lived
Episode 13 – Nurse Ratched and Umbrella Mountain
Buddha – 29.5 – Decanted
We’ll cover all of these in future episodes.
I’ll see you next time!