Vishnu – Face-Lift – {Ep.200} – Stories From India – Podcast

A story about me, Narada Muni! I learn meditation, and then I get a face-lift – thanks to Vishnu!

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

This is episode no 200. That is a milestone even though the actual number of episodes is a bit higher if you include all the bonus and mini episodes. Still, that is worth celebrating. So I thought it would be fitting to talk about me! Yup today’s story is a first hand account.

This might be a little bit embarrassing for me, but you’ll see me make a monkey out of myself. And lastly we’ll see me break the time travelers code and reveal the future. Something that should have gotten me in trouble. Everyone at the time interpreted it as a curse, so I got off the hook.

Now, you’ll probably know that my primary job is to hobnob with Gods and Goddesses, and that’s mostly what I do. Except when I am playing my veena, which if you are unfamiliar with is a musical instrument. It has strings like a guitar but it is more Indian and more classical.

Anyway, so on the day the story starts I was minding my own business wandering through a forest when I was rudely interrupted by my own thoughts. Seeing this serene forest atmosphere I was tempted. You see I had often seen many other Rishis who had sat meditating in an environment like this and they had managed it for days, months, years even decades. I wondered what it felt like. I’d just eaten lunch at the palace of a friendly King and I was due to arrive for high tea at the palace of a different friendly King. And then I had some time after that before I then headed over for dinner to a third King’s palace. I guess figuring out the route I take would be considered more of a traveling foodie problem than a traveling salesman problem. 

While it was nice to be welcomed everywhere, and to always have a place at the dining table wherever I went, it wasn’t always ideal. Sometimes I wish I could go about incognito. For one thing I wouldn’t have to deal with never ending questions about the future. Tell me the winning lottery numbers, tell me if my neighboring kingdom will attack, tell me if it will rain, so I know whether to take my family to the Royal beach tomorrow. 

They expect me to tell them because I’ve revealed the future before. But you told Savitri about Satyavan back in Episode 31. I tried to tell them that episode was almost 3 years ago but they don’t readily accept any kind of a deflection.

So to cut a long story short, I was looking for a break from all this pressure. And now here, in this forest it seemed there was a chance of finding it. I decided to meditate the way I had seen many rishis do. I had theoretical knowledge of how to meditate, of course. You already know by now that I have unlimited knowledge of everything. But that doesn’t mean I knew exactly how to do it. 

What I learned is that meditating is a little bit like being a tourist. I mean, you can’t just get your experience from a guidebook, you’ve got to immerse yourself, walk along the streets, and sample the local pani puri and try the local lassi. I had no sooner closed my eyes in that serene environment, and just like that I drifted off in multiple directions. I began to think of deep thoughts that had been nagging me, but which I never had the time to focus on. As it turned out, I had bottled up a lot of deep thoughts that had been silently nagging me. Because as I later found out, I was deep in meditation for years! 

The King who was expecting me for dinner got worried when I didn’t show. His search party found me in the forest. And because it’s a sin to disturb a meditating person, they left me alone. I guess though that that rule applies only to ordinary humans.

Because there was a different King who took a completely different action when he heard I was meditating. And this was Indra, the King of the Devs. He lived up in heaven or Swarg. But often his business was down here on Earth. And today, his business was me. You see, Indra is a bit worried about how everyone on Earth seems to be getting all kinds of supernatural powers all the time. And this King of the Devs was determined to put a stop to it, because he felt that they were a threat to his own power.

Indra had in the past hired some very expensive management consultants. They spent 20 years and a considerable amount of his money to analyze this growing problem. They got all the details they wanted from Indra, and fed him back his own ideas. Only they dressed it up nicely in a report. The primary observation in the regurgitated report was that most people who ended up with supernatural powers had begun by meditating in a serene forest or mountain setting. The easiest way out was to disrupt their meditation. When that happened, it would either discourage the person into giving up, or they would start all over again and maybe get interrupted again. The report also confirmed that Indra’s response to such situations was the correct one – to send in the Apsaras, or celestial dancers. Their dancing and the accompanying catchy music were perfectly optimized to distract. And in the unlikely case that the Apsaras wouldn’t succeed, there was a backup plan.

You might wonder why this applies to me. I’m no ordinary human. Why was Indra worried about my meditation? Well two things – he didn’t know that I wasn’t seeking more superpowers. And secondly he’d just installed an automatic response system so that I was surrounded by Apsaras pretty much as soon as I started meditating. I didn’t hear them at all of course, I only learned about this later. I was far too focused.

The Apsaras turned up the volume, brought in these massive speakers and amplifiers, and they switched from dancing to acrobatics. But nothing bothered me. I kept meditating.

Indra then sent in reinforcements. Kamadeva. The god of love. Kamadev’s speciality is to inspire love, of the non-platonic variety. Kamadev’s powers had tempted Shiva himself. And when you consider that Shiva is amongst the holy trinity – the most powerful beings in the Universe, that’s saying something. He did pay the price for it though, when Shiva got angry and opened his third eye and vaporized Kamadeva. It took forever for Kamadev’s disintegrated atoms to slowly reassemble. 

And now, this God of love positioned his bow and aimed his arrow straight at me. It wasn’t an arrow that would cause physical pain. It was designed to manipulate the victim’s emotions, to make them give in to temptations, to see the world around them in a different light. Well, none of that worked on me. I continued meditating. Indra tried a couple of other gods – he had Agni the God of Fire create a warm and toasty fire that should have made me uncomfortable. Vaayu, the God of Wind, tried to create a mini hurricane around me. But nothing worked.

The only thing that worked was me deciding to open my eyes. I was surprised to see so many people around – Apsaras, Kamadeva, Agni, and Vaayu. And Indra himself.

Indra sounded a little worried when he asked what new superpowers I had received. And when I told him none, and I’d just been meditating for the sake of meditating – not to receive a superpower to play my veena in a fancy new way. They all looked daggers and knives at me as if all their wasted time and effort was somehow my fault.

Well I went my merry way after that. And as I reflected on this incident, I realized that maybe, yeah, I had discovered a new superpower – something I always had and that only became apparent to me now. I could overcome temptation. Kamadev’s arrows are ordinarily infallible. Even Shiva who had the power to destroy the entire Universe was affected, but I wasn’t.

Not that I was trying to show off or anything, but I thought, why not ask Shiva about it? So I went straight to Mount Kailash where Shiva lives. It’s a pretty cold place given it’s high up in the Kailas range past the Himalayas. Shiva even had an alternative warm palace constructed for his family and then just gave it away and stayed in Kailas. And that’s not all – he gave that palace away to Ravana, the evil King of Lanka. But that’s a story for another time.

Shiva greeted me warmly. Not just because my father, Brahma, is part of the Holy Trinity too. He knew what I had done. Of course. All three of them – Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu seem to have powers to observe everything everywhere in the Universe. Seems necessary since their main function is to create, destroy and preserve the universe. Shiva complimented me for how well I had resisted Kamadev’s attempts to distract me. I’d never heard such praise from any of the 3 of them before. 

Maybe that was what got into my head a little. Shiva sensed it, and when leaving, he even cautioned me against showing off my recent achievement in front of Vishnu.

But hey, how could I not? I’m Vishnu’s biggest fan. I’m president for life of his fan club. Everywhere I go, I’m always chanting his name. How could I avoid this opportunity to be complimented by someone whom I deeply admired? And I thought, Shiva had praised me, surely Vishnu would also do that? 

Well, he did. Vishnu nodded his head slightly and said “well done Narada” – which, coming from Vishnu is high praise indeed! In retrospect, I shouldn’t have spent the next two hours describing how I overcome those busloads of Apsaras, how I swiftly dodged a barrage of arrows from Kamadeva, and how I avoided the Category 6 hurricane from Vaayu, the Tsunami from Varun, the mount everest sized fire from Agni. I would have gone on with my story, with even more exaggerations, but Vishnu interrupted to say that he had to get going. Princess Shrimati, was having a swayamvar, and that we were both on the guest list and we should probably get going now. A swayamvar in case you don’t know is a ceremony where a bride selects a groom from amongst a carefully screened audience.

That gave me an idea. You see, I had heard of the Princess – especially her intelligence, her charm and her humor – each of those was off the charts. And I’d been thinking after my recent accomplishment. Maybe I should consider settling down, and give domestic life a try. And for someone like me, with universal knowledge, and the ability to travel in space and time – it seemed like the Princess might make the ideal companion.

An idea struck me, and walking together with Vishnu, I immediately put it into action. “You know how I’ve never asked you for anything? I’m just a hopelessly devoted fan of yours”

Vishnu immediately sensed where I was going and told me “yeah, no problem. What do you want? It’s yours”

Well, what I wanted was a decent shot at being picked by the princess at her Swayamwar. I knew where I needed a boost – my face. So I asked Vishnu to give me a face like Hari. You might wonder who Hari is. But let me clarify. Hari is just another name for Vishnu. There are other meanings of this name too, which I knew obviously, but I didn’t think about in that situation.  And that’s the price I was going to pay.

You see, Hari could also refer to multiple tawny colored animals. Lions, monkeys. And if there were any Giraffes in Ancient India, they might also have been called Hari. Well, Vishnu changed my face to that of a monkey. I didn’t feel any difference, but that’s again because of Vishnu’s skill.

There were curious stares from people along the way, and even at the palace. There wasn’t as much snickering. Except from the Princess. Well not snickering technically. She couldn’t help laughing when she saw me. Rude, I know. But I wasn’t offended, only puzzled. Obviously she did not pick me during the Swayamvar.

Later, Vishnu took me to a nearby pond and when I saw my own monkey face reflected in it, I understood. I wasn’t happy of course. But neither was I upset. It’s impossible to get upset with Vishnu. He’d done what I’d asked him to do. To give me the face of Hari. And it wasn’t all doom and gloom. The Princess’s rude laughter made me feel that I had dodged a bullet after all.

The one thing I reflected on was the irony of this situation. I was separated from my potential wife, just the way that Vishnu, as Ram, was going to be separated from his wife – Sita. The irony was that he would be dependent on help from monkeys to rescue her. Vishnu agreed somberly, and we didn’t speak any more about it. So that was it. There I was breaking the time travelers code by talking about a future event, and most people seem to have interpreted my remarks as having cursed Vishnu. My view on this is that it only matters what I know and Vishnu knows, and we both knew that I wasn’t cursing him. And now, you know the truth as well

That’s it for this time

Some notes on the show

This isn’t the first time Vishnu has disrupted my chance at a domestic life. In the very first episode, Episode 0, Vishnu demonstrated the power of Maya. Check it out if you haven’t heard it before

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, by popular demand we’ll do a Vikram and Betaal story. We’ll see a security guard ask for higher than normal wages, and why those wages might be worth it. We’ll also see a doomsday prediction and people acting rashly

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

Thank you Aarush, Vamsi and Parasasapbi and Bindu for the feedback and suggestions. I’ve got a long backlog and I appreciate your patience as I work through this. 

I plan to put up a similar poll again. Unfortunately the poll only has 7 items. So I’ll rotate in new story ideas and categories as and when I cover some other ones.

If you have any other 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 on the site sfipodcast.com, or tweet @sfipodcast, or reply to the questions on Spotify Q&A. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook.

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A big thank you to each of you for your continued support and your feedback.

The music is from Purple Planet.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!