KRISHNA CORIOLIS#2: Dance of Govinda

by Ashok K. Banker

  The child was a tiny lump on a large cot.

  She stood over the cot, looking down at the little bundle of flesh, dark as the darkest shadows in the room, yet still visible since his skin seemed to catch the faintest motes of light in a curious manner, almost seeming as if he was bluish-black in hue.

  He was wide awake and looking up at her.

  ‘Slayer,’ she said softly.

  He gurgled and struck his forehead with a tiny fist. It curiously resembled a military salute.

  She smiled. ‘I see you know who I am. But I’ll introduce myself anyway, just to be polite. My name is Putana.’

  Putana-maasi!

  The words popped into her head unbidden. She resisted the temptation to look around to see who had spoken. Nobody human had spoken, of course. It was just the Slayer, using an old mind trick, a favourite of the devas and their cronies.

  ‘Why not?’ She shrugged, not bothering to keep her tone low.‘Call me Putana-maasi if you like. I would be like an aunt to you, if you were human, and I was too!’

  Naughty aunty!

  She laughed.‘Yes. Naughty aunty indeed. And I’m about to do something very naughty now. Perhaps the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done.’

  Bad stree. Unfit to be a Maatr. Unable to be mortal. Pity you, Putana-maasi!

  She lost her smile. It snapped off like a dry twig. ‘What? How dare you, you impudent little brat! You have no right to judge me.’

  I don’t judge you. I merely assess your past deeds. You have already been judged and found guilty of your crimes. That is why you are here on earth, as punishment for those wrongs. It was thought that once on this mortal realm, you would realize the consequences of your past misdeeds. You would see that here among humans, every action has a consequence and must be weighed carefully. Immortality can go to your head at times, as can great power. The humility of living like a mortal being ought to have taught you to amend yourself. And yet you did not mend your ways.You continued abusing your powers. And once again, here you are, seeking to do the bidding of an adharmic rakshasa and commit the most heinous crime any Maatr can commit.

  Through the conversation, he was absolutely still. Putana couldn’t even see him breathing. Only once he had finished ‘speaking’ to her mind did he resume kicking and waving his arms and stuffing his fist in his mouth to suck on it.

  ‘Enough!’ she said.‘I have no wish to be reprimanded by one whose only purpose is to take birth on this mortal realm in order to commit murder. Slayer, they call you, and that is all you are, a slayer! But I will stop you before you can commit your crime, you smug superior creature. I shall slay the Slayer before he can slay the one prophesied to be slain!’

  Putana had bent over as she said this, to direct the words with greatest intensity at Krishna. Now, he gurgled and spat, spittle dotting her face and causing her to blink. She snarled a deep animal snarl, snatched him up from the cot on which he lay, and sat down on the cot herself. Tearing open her blouse, she put his puckered toothless mouth to her chest, and pressed him so hard, he could be smothered for want of breath. She expected him to struggle or flail pathetically, but he did nothing of the kind. In fact, he raised his little fist and clung enthusiastically to her chest, suckling on her greedily as he did so. She felt the Halahala poison work through her maternal organs and pour into his little mouth, the poison whose single drop could wipe out an entire city. He was drinking it like mother’s milk now. She was surprised at how easy this had been, after all.

  ‘Really,’ she said, ‘I’m very disappointed. I expected much more of a fight from you. If you really are Vishnu’s avatar as the prophecy claims, this must surely be your weakest one yet. You didn’t even put up a struggle! And now, in moments, you’ll be dead and your mission here a complete and utter failure.’

  fourteen

  Yashoda came awake with a start. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue the consistency of sand, and her throat parched. Her head felt heavy, as if she had overslept and forgotten something vital.

  It came to her at once: Krishna!

  She bolted upright, looking around at the room full of her sleeping sisters, sisters-in-law and other relatives.

  Everyone was still asleep. That was not unusual. The womenfolk had been up late the night before, preparing savouries for the Ashwin festival.

  But the way she felt suggested that there was something abnormal about their deep sleep. She felt certain that she had been drugged somehow. She had sensed trouble the instant word of the approaching entourage from Mathura had reached her. She did not trust anyone from Mathura, least of all high- ranking aristocrats from Kamsa’s court. They were up to no good; she was certain of it.

  Even Nanda did not deny her doubts or try to persuade her otherwise; instead, his brow had puckered in that familiar wrinkling pattern and he had nodded sagely.

  ‘It may be some kind of trick,’ he had admitted. ‘After Devaki and Vasudeva’s departure and their inability to locate them thereafter, I hear they have grown desperate to find some trace of the Slayer.’

  He glanced at her with the same expression he had first shown her when speaking about Krishna and Balarama’s reunion with Vasudeva and Devaki. That expression that said, Yes, yes, I do understand that something extraordinary is under way and that we are an integral part of it. But let us not speak of it openly or casually. I am struggling simply to accept what I have seen already, leave alone wrap my mind around what will be in the days to come.

  She had only taken his hand and kissed it gently in response. That was Nanda. A gopa, a king of gopas, and happy to be just that much. He had no desire to get involved with slayers and prophecies and divine interventions. Perhaps that was precisely why he had been chosen to foster the avatar, because he was so unlikely a prospect and so simple and level headed a man.

  Now she rushed through the house, towards her bedchamber where she had left Krishna sleeping peacefully before joining the visitor lady named Putana in the other room.

  She entered the room, bracing herself for anything ...

  But there was nobody there.

  She touched the cot where Krishna had been lying. It was still warm. And wet. She felt the damp patch with her fingers and lifted the fingertip to her nose, sniffing. She grimaced. It smelt like milk, but not any milk she had ever smelt before. Certainly not her own milk. She knew quite well what that smelt like.

  She was about to touch her fingertip to her tongue to taste it when a scream jolted her. She looked around, but there was nobody and nothing to be seen. The house was still asleep, although she thought she heard sounds from the men’s section.

  The scream rattled her again, louder this time, and more blood-curdling than the first time. She sensed that it was

  coming from outside the house, not within. She ran out, and a third scream came to her as she ran, and this time, just as she was exiting the threshold, she heard the unmistakable sounds of her family and Nanda’s family stirring, rising, awoken by the screams.

  ‘Krishna!’ she cried out as she stepped out of the house.

  Nanda heard his wife crying out, her voice barely audible through the terrible, heart-rending screams that filled the air. It seemed that everyone in Vrajbhoomi would hear those screams. Perhaps they could be heard as far away as Mathura itself!

  His skin crawled and his head ached with each new wave of screaming, and he left his house to see the source that was polluting the pristine calm of Gokul with such ear-bursting violence.

  An astonishing sight met his eyes.

  It was late afternoon, getting on towards evening. The sun was low on the western side, which was straight ahead, the hill directly opposite his house. Below, in the depression between the hill nearest to him and the one beside it, were green pastures where his cows – the ones that were used for his family’s personal consumption – grazed. His other herds were much farther away, of course, spread across Gokul over a yojana or two. These cows in this little valley were barely a few hundred head, just enough to
keep his large household fed.

  He spied a being in the valley, staggering about drunkenly. It took him a moment to recognize it as Lady Putana, the visitor who had arrived from Mathura with her entourage only hours earlier. At least the being looked like her in feature and aspect.

  But there was one significant difference between the aristocratic and very beautiful Lady Putana he had met earlier in the afternoon and the being staggering about in the valley.

  The being was a giantess.

  She was at least twenty yards tall, if not more. The sala trees that grew by the little pond below were about ten to twelve yards tall, and she was at least double that height.

  And, if he was indeed seeing right, she was growing taller by the minute. Now she appeared to be another yard or two taller ... and she was still growing.

  He watched, bemused, as she continued to grow, even as she staggered about like a person who has had too much wine and has grown hysterically drunk.

  She bumped against one of the sala trees and it cracked with a loud report, the sound carrying easily to where he stood. The top half of the tree fell into the pond with a loud splash. Startled cows, already nervous from the giantess screaming and staggering about, mooed loudly in protest and began chugging their way uphill, heading homewards to safety. The giant Putana flailed her arms around, beating at her own chest, or at least that was what it seemed like to Nanda from where he stood.

  Then she turned around, swinging in a drunken lurch, to face him for the first time.

  And he saw that there was something clinging to her chest. Not something, someone.

  Krishna. His Krishna.

  Except that his beautiful, dark little infant boy had also grown as Putana had. He was several times larger in size now. Large enough to be at least twice the size of Nanda himself, if he was judging correctly. Certainly larger than the cow jogging nervously past the lurching giantess’s feet.

  Krishna was clinging to Putana’s chest. He appeared to be feeding on her milk.

  People had come out of his house and were standing beside Nanda now, some bleary eyed and holding their heads. But they forgot their discomfort the moment they saw what was happening in the valley below. And as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing, their voices rose in a chorus of queries and exclamations.

  Nanda saw figures pouring from all directions. The screams were drawing gopas and gopis from all across Gokul. As it is, speculation had been rife about the visitors. Now he was sure that every Yadava in Gokul would be there within the half hour. Armed, possibly.

  In the valley below, the giantess continued to grow, as if she was consciously expanding herself. She was now easily thrice the height of the sala trees and still growing at the same prodigious rate.

  Nanda could not fathom how such a thing was possible, but one cannot deny such happenings if they take place in front of one’s eyes. He shushed the people around him, ignoring their excited questions, and watched the extraordinary show unfold.

  Krishna was now thrice the size of a grown man, and due to the increased size of the duo caught in an uneasy duel, uneasy at least for one of the participants, the happenings were clearly visible. Krishna was feeding on Putana’s breast, drinking her milk. His cheeks could be seen working greedily, sucking hard. Milk poured into his mouth and spilled down his cheeks, though curiously enough, Nanda noted, not a drop spilled on the ground – neither on the grassy pasture, nor in the pond, on the trees, or even on the cows lumbering past mooing in disapproval at this invasion of their home pastures.

  And from the dwindling screams, harried look and staggering drunken lurching of the woman, it was evident that she was suffering terribly.

  Somehow, Krishna was sucking the life out of Putana. How, why, wherefore, Nanda did not know.

  All he knew was what he was seeing.

  Then he noticed something else, something he had not observed before. So striking was the sight of a giant woman with a giant baby clinging to her chest staggering through his pasture, that Nanda had failed to notice his wife a little way down the hillside. She was watching the giantess and the enormous baby with an expression that Nanda guessed mirrored his own. He presumed she had run out at the sound of the screams, fearing that Krishna was in distress, but had stopped midway when she realized that it was the other way around.

  ‘Stay where you are, all of you!’ he shouted to his and his wife’s family, then ran down the hillside. He half-slid, half-ran to where Yashoda stood. She started when she heard him coming, then relaxed when she saw who it was. He stood beside her, putting his arm around her shoulder comfortingly.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked her.‘What is happening?’

  Yashoda answered in a tone so grim, he had to glance at her several times to make sure it really was the same gentle, loving Yashoda he knew.‘That woman ... that creature of the night ... Putana-maasi, he calls her ... came here on Kamsa’s behalf to kill our Krishna. Her body contains a deadly poison. She sought to suckle our baby, to poison him to death. Apparently, she has done this before ...’ She paused and spat to one side. ‘Often before. But she was not counting on our Krishna’s divinity being beyond her powers. Now, he is sucking every last drop of poison from her body so that she cannot do it to any other child ever again, whether in this mortal realm or any other plane she goes to hereafter.’

  By now, Putana was at least fifty yards tall, and though Yashoda and Nanda were on the side of the hill, they were forced to look upwards. She had stopped trying to run away or was unable to move any further, and simply stood in one place, swaying from side to side. Her face was withering, cheeks sinking like sand into a hole, hair wilting, eyes turning opaque, the entire body losing its lush, womanly contours.

  Nanda swallowed nervously.

  He is sucking every last drop of poison from her body.

  It appeared as if Krishna was sucking more than poison, he was sucking out Putana’s life itself. The giantess was dying. He saw now that she had finally stopped growing and was now swaying faster, threatening to topple over. Krishna, about five or six times a man’s size now, yet still a baby in every way, kicked his legs and squeezed Putana’s body harder with his bunched fists.

  Putana let out one final groan. It was more a gasp. A final feeble attempt to breathe. Then she fell heavily to the ground, crashing down on the side of the facing hill and making the ground tremble in the process. Her body covered almost half the width of the pasture field.

  Krishna released her body and began to reduce in size. Within moments, he was the size of a normal human baby.

  ‘Come on,’ Nanda said, taking Yashoda by the hand. They went down the hill together, and he could hear shouts and cries as others followed suit. He guessed that several hundred residents of Gokul would gather in a few moments.

  They reached the body of the fallen giantess and ran around it, seeking their child. The body appeared emaciated, as if all the life-blood had been sucked out of it, and the marrow as well. It was a horrible sight. They came around the head of the creature and Yashoda balked. Nanda resisted the urge to turn his face away. The giantess’s face was awful to behold. She looked gaunt and skeletal, unbearable to look at closely. And her sheer size made her disfigurement frightening. Nanda could not imagine a whole army of men facing this giant being and besting it, let alone a single yearling. Yet he himself, along with many other Gokuls, had witnessed it with his own eyes.

  He stopped short as they came across another remarkable sight.

  Krishna.

  He was standing.

  Nanda had seen his child creeping about, crawling, and even attempting to stand up by holding onto things or people, mainly his own mother, but he had not actually begun to stand yet.

  But here he was now.

  Standing. Upon the dead giantess’s chest.

  Waving his chubby arms up in the air in a gesture that undeniably resembled a victory wave.

  And gurgling as usual. Laughing. Chuckling. Giggling.

 
Chortling.

  Nanda stood transfixed, watching baby Krishna. He heard

  and felt people come up behind him and saw them across the field, watching, calling out to one another in amazement and disbelief, some even laughing and crying, for they were simple people and given to expressing their emotions freely.

  They watched as Krishna took one step, then another, and then yet another.

  ‘Nanda,’ Yashoda said with a mother’s tone of unmistakable pride.‘Look! Our son is walking! His first steps!’

  Then, as they watched, Krishna clapped his hands in glee, leapt once in the air, landed on both feet, tottered briefly for a moment – the watching crowd went ‘Aaah!’ intrepidation – and then began to move in a way that could be interpreted as only one action.

  He was dancing.

  Upon the corpse of the giant demoness who had come to kill him.

  As he danced, the Gokuls began to clap, encouraging him. He picked up the rhythm of their clapping and danced to it, delighting them further. They laughed and pointed to one another, the crisis forgotten.

  And then, slowly, the chant began to rise. It began with a single voice, then another joined in, then yet another, and so on, until finally everyone present – all the hundreds of Gokuls standing around and watching, including Nanda and Yashoda – was chanting, clapping to keep the beat.

  They sang a single word, over and over again. It simply means cowherd, and was a common nickname given to most young gopas in Vraj.

  ‘Govinda!’ they sang.‘Govinda! Govinda! GOVINDA!’

  And their singing reached a crescendo and filled the entire valley, as the infant Krishna danced and danced merrily, until the entire world seemed to echo with the refrain.

  ‘GOVINDA!’

  And above the chanting, the sound of Krishna chortling as he danced on.