In this episode, we’re going to continue the story of the Churning of the Ocean or Samudra Manthan. If you haven’t heard the previous two episodes, I highly recommend you check those out.
But here’s a short recap anyway.
The Devs were led by their King Indra into temporary bankruptcy because he offended the wrong person – Durvasa. In a Thanos-like snap-your-fingers moment, he cursed their home in heaven, their magic wishing tree, and everything else they enjoyed right out of existence.
The Devs and Indra appealed to my Dad, Brahma the creator of the Universe who directed them to Vishnu, the Preserver, who had just the solution for them! To churn the Ocean of Milk to synthesize things they had lost. But to do so, he told them they needed to collaborate with their enemies – the Asurs. Indra managed to get Bali the King of the Asurs’ buy-in by tempting him with the nectar of immortality.
And so, on the appointed day the Devs and the Asuras assembled in a tug of war position, but not for a tug of war. Instead, it was for cooperative pulling. Vasuki Naag, the Snake around Shiva’s neck served as the rope, and it went around Mount Mandar which was the churning rod.
The mountain began to sink, and so Vishnu transformed into a Giant Turtle and held up the Mountain on his back.
Meanwhile, the Devs and the Asurs continued to pull. No one knew what to expect other than Vishnu of course. But he was busy holding up Mount Mandar at that time. I knew of course. I knew every action that was to take place here. And this was something I could not interfere with. I knew Vishnu had the situation completely under control.
Brahma was in charge of cataloging and stock-keeping anything new that might emerge from the Churning. He had been idle for a while now, but he was suddenly about to get very busy. I mean he even had to create himself an extra pair of arms to jot everything down.
The very first Ratna to emerge was not a jewel at all which is the literal meaning of the word Ratna. It was a Goddess. The Goddess Lakshmi. She’s the Goddess of Fortune and Wealth.
Brahma was shocked. He was about to take opening bids on the first Ratna that emerged, but seeing as it was a person, a living being he didn’t know quite how to proceed here.
Luckily, Lakshmi had a readymade solution. She chose to be with that God over there, the one standing right next to Narada.
I almost jumped out of skin because I’d be standing all by myself. I turned around and I saw Vishnu.
“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be under the Sea, holding up Mandar?” I asked him, shocked.
“Come on, Narada. Why do you ask such a question? Haven’t you learned anything about the power of Maya?” he replied.
He paused a bit and said, “Do you need another demonstration like in Episode 0 of your podcast?”
“Thank you for calling out Episode 0 for new listeners. I will add that the word Maya means illusion. But I definitely do not need another demonstration. I know all the things you can do with Maya.” I paused and added “For instance, I know exactly what you’re going to do here with the Amrit once it’s out”
Lakshmi had meanwhile strolled over. Her wishes had been fully respected. She was free to be with whomever she wanted to be with. Shiva, Parvati, and Bali came over and there were lots of handshakes all around. Obviously, this was pre-COVID.
We didn’t have to wait for the next few Ratnas though.
The Apsaras, divine celestial dancers came next! And they were known for their beauty. This included Rambha, Menaka, and a few others. All of them chose to be with the Gandharvas or the musicians of Heaven.
And then came Varuni, who was not the most presentable of those that had appeared so far. She went to the Asuras.
Devs and Asurs continued to pull away, as more Ratna emerged. There was a bow and a Shell. Those went to Vishnu. A Jewel called Kaustubh, again this went to Vishnu.
There were a pair of earrings, that Indra gave as a gift to his mom.
Airavat returned, and Indra was so happy to see him again, they hugged!
Don’t try this at home folks. Being hugged by an elephant can crush you!
A wish-fulfilling cow emerged! And she went to Brahma. I was going to remark that family dinners were going to get very interesting in the future when I saw Brahma passing on the Cow to a group of Rishis. Oh well, maybe grim silence at the dinner table over not having a wish-fulfilling cow in the family would be an okay substitute.
Next emerged a couple of trees, a Parijata tree, and the Kalpavriksha, or wish-fulfilling tree.
Both were taken up by Indra. He placed the Kalpavriksha in Heaven and we call this the Milky Way in our night sky.
The Parijata blossoms year-round and it became the pride of Indra’s garden!
Bali was starting to get antsy now. His team had received nothing so far. True, he hadn’t negotiated this part with Indra, but this was quite unfair.
Vishnu and Brahma began to sense that. And so when the next Ratna emerged they presented it to Bali. It was a horse. And what a horse! It had 7 heads but nevertheless looked majestic!
“Oh great, 7 more mouths to feed for the price of 1 saddle space” grumbled Bali. But secretly he was pleased.
When the next Ratna emerged, Devs and Asurs gasped! It was the Moon. And the Moon had not existed before.
“Is that made of Cheese?” asked a Dev.
“Why does it have all those holes?” asked an Asura
“I call dibs on that hair ornament,” said a voice. It was Shiva.
Shiva, if you haven’t heard Episode 42 River Mother, likes to take care of his hair. And the Moon fit his hair perfectly.
Bali, jealous of all of the other Gods for the Ratnas they had called out “Dibs on the next Ratna.”
But that was a bad idea! Because the next Ratna was poison!
This wasn’t the ordinary poison that divine creatures could resist. This was a poison of divine origins. It could consume anything! Including the fabric of the Universe itself.
It was called Halahala, but the characteristics may remind you of a Black Hole.
There were panicked stares all around as people as Devs and Asurs screamed. I knew what could save them, and indeed the Universe. I’d been prepared. So I quickly turned to face Shiva and said “Do it now, please.”
I knew what Shiva had been thinking. He would later tell me so.
Eternal knowledge and foresight do come in handy! The downside is that there are no surprise birthday parties for me, ever.
Anyway, Shiva energized by my words stepped forward and sucked in the poison out of the air, out of the Ocean. He drew it all in immediately! That’s how awesome he is!
Before he could swallow it though, Parvati immediately grabbed his neck!
Don’t worry folks, she wasn’t strangling him or anything. She was just limiting the spread of the poison. Her quick-thinking action limited the poison just to his throat. And that is why Shiva has a blue throat!
Along with Halahala, there had emerged Alakshmi, or Jyestha, the goddess of misfortune. Kind of like an anti-matter version of Lakshmi. But because there wasn’t an anti-matter version of Vishnu, she instead married a Rishi. Ultimately she occupies inauspicious places. Her story is an interesting one as well and we can hope to cover that in a future episode.
Once Shiva removed Halahala from the air and the Ocean, the Devs, and Asurs got back to their churning. Finally, there emerged a God – Dhanavantari, carrying a pot of something that looked like Amrit, or the nectar of immortality!
And that’s exactly what it was. All Devs and Asuras dropped the Naag and rushed to Dhanavantari. There was immediate disagreement on how the Amrit should be divided. One conflict-averse Dev asked hopefully if anyone had bowls and spoons. Another asked Dhanavantari if he had the recipe, but Dhanavantari, the God of Medicine, simply smiled in return.
This is starting to get out of hand, we have to fix this Indra said to Bali. But neither was clear how. The Devs and the Asurs had worked hard for this moment!
Imagine if a tournament finals had ended in a tie as it can in some sports. If two bitter rivals had worked hard and both been awarded a single trophy, could they really be expected to handle that, well, sportingly?
“You boys look like you’re in a muddle. May I help?” asked a voice.
Everyone stopped talking at once and looked at her. She had some charm some charisma. I knew every time she spoke, the world would stop still just to hear her.
“Lady, I can use your help all day, any day!” said one Asura
“What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this anyway?” asked another.
“Can I follow you on Instagram?” and the questions flowed.
One Asura, Rahu, was not convinced. He turned to face Vishnu and asked “Is this you?”
Vishnu just shrugged. But he gave me a secret wink and showed me an empty bottle labeled “Mohini”.
Mohini told all the Asurs, “I’ll give you all the details of that but first things first boys. I don’t have an easy way to say this, but you guys don’t exactly smell like great! It’s from all the hard work you’ve been doing all day. Why don’t y’all go have some quick showers and when you’re back I’ll divide the Amrit between yourselves? And just like you Asurs said, the Devs can wait in line behind you.”
“For the shower that is”, she muttered under her breath but no one would have heard her anyway. Eager to please this beautiful lady they had all rushed off.
Mohini spoke to Indra, quick, let’s divide this up.
“Huh? What” asked Indra who still hadn’t realized that Mohini was an Avatar of Vishnu.
But when he did catch on, they all sprung into action. And quickly the entire pot of Amrit had been divided up and consumed!
But as it turned out, not all of the consumers had been Devs.
Rahu, who had been skeptical of Mohini, had hung back and disguised himself as a Dev. He too was now consuming the Amrit.
Quickly, Mohini took out her Sudharshan Chakra, a flying disc that was like a circular saw, and chopped off his head to prevent him from turning immortal. But it was too late. He was decapitated, but both his head and body were independently immortal.
We know these as Rahu and Ketu, they’re in our Solar system.
The Asurs, when they returned were disappointed. And rightly so. For all their hard work and equal participation, they had very little to show for it. They would go back into battle against the Devs, but those stories we’ll cover in other episodes.
That’s all I have for the main story but I have lots of notes this time, so buckle in.
Notes
First and foremost, we’ll talk about this cosmic scale experiment itself. I’ve called this project the “Large Hill Churner” or LHC.
You may have heard about the largest machine ever built by people – the Large Hedron Collider at CERN in Geneva.
The initials are the same, and this is not a coincidence. There are striking parallels between the two.
Both the Samudra Manthan and particle accelerators are experiments on a grand scale. When designing both, scientists werent very sure of what to expect. Every particle that emerged was a gift towards expanding human scientific knowledge. On a similar note, it is a common in these particle experiments for a matter-anti-matter pair to emerge together. Kind of like what happened with Lakshmi and Alakshmi.
There was a big media outcry about a decade ago when the LHC went operational about the the possibility of it creating micro black holes that would devour the Earth. That’s definitely not a concern for the LHC. It’s energies are far too low to allow that to happen. Devs and Asurs pulling on Vasuki Naag raise particles to way higher energies than the LHC could ever hope to.
Besides, having just glimpsed at the future, I can confidently state that the Earth isnt due for a Black Hole scare for a while. The parallel between the Halahala and Black Holes is clear enough as an ever expanding place in space that pulls in and consumes its surroundings. It can only be contained by enclosing it in a divine extra-dimensional body like Shiva’s. I wont say more on that. Dealing with Black holes is a part that human scientists will have to figure out for themselves.
At this point we’ve covered all 10 avatars of Vishnu. That is, including Mohini and Kurma as two separate Avatars.
There are more stories of Mohini that we’ll cover in a future episode. We also have to cover more stories of Parshuram. And of course, we’ll continue talking about Ram and Krishna as we continue through the Ramayan and the Mahabharat.
I’ll be doing Parshuram stories soon, and at that time we’ll cover some interesting thoughts around the evolution of the avatars.
We’ve encountered Apsaras before. In particular, we’ve met Menaka as Shakuntala’s mother in Episode 37 – A fishy engagement, and the Apsara Anjana as Hanuman’s mom in Episode 25 – Up, Up and Away.
Lakshmi is an awesome goddess in her own right, and she has done some fabulous things.
Dhanavantari, the God who appeared with the Amrit, is actually not the God of Modern Medicine. Rather, he’s’ the God of Ayurveda, an ancient version of Medicine that is still practiced to this day.
We’ve encountered Aditi’s earrings before in Mini-Episode 41.5 – Narakasura
Other 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
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll be talking about Razia Sultana! She was a fearless warrior, a wise ruler and the first woman to rule India!
If you have comments or suggestions or if there are particular stories you’d like to hear, please do let me know by leaving a comment or a review here, or tweet @sfipodcast. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook.
Be sure to subscribe to the show to get notified automatically of new episodes.
Thanks to all you listeners for your continued support and your feedback.
I’ll see you next time!