KRISHNA CORIOLIS#4: Lord of Mathura (22 page)

Akrura, Krishna and Balarama performed the morning ritual standing chest deep in a freshwater pool replenished constantly by the flow of Yamuna.  Akrura’s patron deity was Mitra and he performed his prayers to the great God with due diligence and all necessary ritual. 

Afterwards, as they emerged from the water and came upon the grassy bank, Akrura began shedding tears freely. Balarama noticed and caught hold of their elder friend’s shoulder, steadying him. Balarama gestured to Krishna with his eyes and Krishna turned back to Akrura, steadying him from the other side. All three of them sat on the grassy bank of Yamuna. Birds flew overhead, a fisherman poled his boat upriver, and a cluster of brahmacharyas waited by the ferry stand to cross over to the Yamuna side. The first rays of morning sunlight were slanting across the riverbank and a soft cool breeze blew, sending up a shirring from the grass and leaves of trees in the nearby grove. 

Krishna and Balarama waited for their elder to regain control of his emotions. Finally, Akrura managed to gain some hold of his senses and began tos peak. 

4

‘Svaphalka
my father, and Gandini my mother, both great personages of the Satvata, saw fit to name me Akrura,’ said the older man, still weeping freely. ‘Akrura means He Who Is Not Cruel. But in fact, I am the cruelest man alive today. For I am delivering you boys into the hands of your own murderous assassin, the wicked Childslayer Himself.’

Balarama put a hand on Akrura’s shoulder, comforting him. But Akrura was too greatly distressed to be easily comforted. 

‘I have sent brave men to their death,’ he said, ‘all but condemned innocent women and children by choosing to resist the Usurper rather than bow down to his dictatorial oppression. I have endangered entire villages and tribes through my leadership of the rebellion. I have even put my own family and loved ones in harm’s way because it was required by the cause. But nothing I have done has made me feel this ashamed of myself as this action today. By taking you boys to certain death, I am condemning myself to eternal damnation.’ 

Krishna said softly, ‘Akrura, you are doing your duty. In this case, it happens to be your dharma. Your task was to come and inform us of Kamsa’s invitation. It was our decision to accept that invitation. No blame falls upon you.’

‘How can you say that?’ Akrura asked. ‘It is all my fault. I should have refused to do as Kamsa asked.’

‘Then he would have killed you,’ Balarama said. ‘On the very spot where you stood.’

Akrura nodded dumbly. ‘Death would have been better than damnation.’ 

‘You will not be damned, Akrura,’ Krishna said. ‘You will ascend to swargaloka itself, the highest level of the heavenly realms. Your great deeds and actions will speak for themselves in earning you great merit. I am certain of it. What say you, Balarama?’

‘I agree with Krishna,’ Balarama said. ‘Heaven reserves a special place for such as yourself.’

Akrura shook his head, unwilling to be convinced. ‘You do not understand. Kamsa invited you on a false pretext, pretending to have you attend the bow ceremony and some such excuse. In fact, he intends to challenge you before all Mathura to a wrestling bout.’

Krishna and Balarama both raised their eyebrows and exchanged a glance. 

‘We enjoy a good wrestling match,’ Krishna said, ‘don’t we, Balarama?’

Balarama stretched out his meaty arms, interlacing his fingers and cracked his knuckles loudly. The sound was loud enough to startle a nuzzling hare into scampering away into the woods. ‘It would be my pleasure to wrestle Uncle Kamsa. I have some special moves I would like to show him.’ He grinned, his teeth predatory in his handsome face. 

‘See? There is nothing to worry about, Akrura,’ Krishna went on. ‘Besides, you forget that we boys have a few tricks up our sleeves as well. We are not without power entirely. After all, that is how we have survived all the attacks by Kamsa’s assassins over the past years. In a way, you could say we were
weaned
on assassins!’

Balarama grunted, catching the reference to Putana. 

‘You are boys yet,’ Akrura said sombrely, ‘you cannot understand what awaits you in Mathura. Whatever assassins Kamsa may have sent to harry you all these years, they are no match for the man himself. He is more powerful than any being alive upon this earth now…barring only Jarasandha, his own father-in-law. And he is surrounded by a coterie of other powerful men, each one of whom is a fighting force unto himself. I have myself witnessed with my own eyes the havoc these men can wreak upon a battlefield, facing contingents of armed and armored soldiers. Kamsa made mincemeat out of hundreds of soldiers in a few moments. They were as ineffectual as insects or ants against his power. No demoniac wet nurse with poisoned milk compares to the terror that is Kamsa unleashed.’ Akrura shook his head again. ‘No, no. You do not understand. This is beyond your ability to survive. Even the Great Deliverer cannot face up to Kamsa and his powerful demons in human form and survive. Perhaps once you are grown fully to manhood, it may be possible to wage a strategic battle and overcome them. Right now you are still but boys. It is too much to expect of you. I am only driving you to your own certain deaths.’

Krishna and Balarama glanced at one another. Balarama shook his head once, pursing his lips as if to say,
The man is fixed in his opinion. What can we say that will change his mind? 

Krishna bent to Akrura. ‘We will speak of this yet, if you wish. But first, go back to the river and wash your face, good Akrura. Then if you want to change your mind, we shall discuss the matter.’

Krishna rose to his feet and gestured to Balarama who followed his example. ‘We shall stand here on the chariot and await your return. If necessary, we can harness the horses again and ride back to Vrindavan if that is your wish. But first go and wash.’

Akrura took a deep breath, nodded, then rose to his feet. With heavy feet and a bent back he walked to the river and immersed himself once again, this time only venturing knee deep. Bending over he cupped water in his hands and splashed it on his face, refreshing himself. He wiped his face clean with the corner of his own anga-vastra. 

He glanced back and saw Krishna and Balarama standing on the empty chariot, waiting for him, limned by the light of the rising sun. They waved to him, smiling encouragingly and he smiled back wistfully, impressed by their youthful maturity and clarity of thought. They were indeed rare young men. That was what made it all the more impossible for him to lead them to certain death at Kamsa’s hands. 

A flicker of movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned back to see what it was.

5

AKRURA
looked at the river and saw two men standing there, immersed in the water, yet fully visible. He blinked rapidly and rubbed away any vestiges of tears or water from his eyes and peered. 

‘Why, they look like Balarama and Krishna! What are they doing there in the middle of the river?’ 

He turned, splashing water as he side-stepped for the current was strong and he was waist-deep. He looked back at the riverbank and there, beside the mound of grass where they had been sitting and comforting him only moments earlier, standing on the chariot, were Krishna and Balarama. They saw him turning and raised their hands and smiled, waving gently. He raised a hand to wave back then grew still. 

He turned back to look out at the river once again. The two figures in the middle of the course were still there. He rubbed his eyes again and looked more intently. 

There was no doubt about it. The figures in the river were also Krishna and Balarama. 

Akrura was not a superstitious or overly religious man. He performed his rituals diligently, took his darshan of the deities whenever possible, praised the appropriate gods at the appropriate time, propitiated those that required propitiation at the opportune moments, and did his due diligence as prescribed by the sacred texts. He was a herder and a warrior and found himself more comfortable with a crook or a sword in hand than a seer’s staff. 

Such a sight genuinely unnerved him. He did not know what to make of it. Clearly, this was a supernatural phenomenon. In this Age, there was no question of believing or not believing in such things: they existed, plain and simple. A person’s belief did not make the planets turn in a different direction nor would it make the sun produce icy chill or the moon generate searing heat. The sun heated, the moon stayed cool, the planets revolved and rotated, and things that could not be explained by rational means co-existed with the stones, the mud, the rain, the flowers, the solid and tangible. 

He knew this was one such event. He knew there was little point in trying to rationalize, explain or deny, or otherwise counter the vision he was witnessing. 

Simpler therefore to attempt to understand it, to perceive whatever implications it had for him personally—he had heard enough about such things to know that if such a vision was being shown to his unschooled eyes it must serve a purpose. Best to focus on that purpose and put the rest aside. 

He steeled himself and looked out at the river. 

He saw that the two figures in the middle of the river were unmistakably Krishna and his half-brother Balarama. He was certain of this in a way that he could not explain. Therefore he accepted it. They
were
Krishna and Balarama and never mind how the two boys could both be in the river as well as on the chariot on the riverbank at the same time. They simply were. 

But as he continued to look at the two boys in the river, he grew aware of the differences. Not in appearance or substance but in the other details. It was as if, when he first caught sight of them, they had been just as they were on the chariot, but the more he stared, the more details he saw…or the more details
appeared
around them. He could not say which. But there was no doubt that each passing moment that he peered at the figures in the river, he saw new things that he felt had not been there a moment earlier. This continued for he knew not how long until at last the vision resolved into some form of solidity. At that point, it settled into a steady panorama of detail. 

This is what he saw:

The river was no longer a river. Instead, its entire sinuous length, traversing the length of the sub-continent all the way up to its Himalayan glacial point of origin, was self-evidently a serpent. The greatest serpent of all, its length unimaginable, exceeding even the hundreds of yojanas visible upon the mortal realm, continuing up to the heavenly levels and beyond into the infinite ocean of milk. 

This great serpent had a thousand heads. Each head ended in a serpentine hood, proud, bejeweled, magnificent, eyes glinting like dark rubies. Upon each hood rested a golden shaped crown. Its length was clad in deep blue vastras, contrasting beautifully with its fair scales which were the exact shade and texture of the fibrous substance of the lotus flower. It sat coiled, surrounded by countless asuras, gandharvas, caranas, and siddhas. All bowed in humility before the great Ananta. 

Seated upon the lap of Ananta the great serpent was Krishna. Yet this was not the Krishna who stood upon the chariot on the riverbank waving gaily to Akrura. 

This Krishna was a Being beyond easy description. He was no mere mortal. He was a God. He possessed four mighty arms, each holding an object or weapon. His color was the shade of a dark monsoon cloud, ganshyam, so darkly pitch-black as to appear almost bluish. Setting off his black complexion were resplendent yellow silk vastras. His eyes were red as lotus petals, half shut in an aspect of ecstatic relaxation, the unmitigated calm of eternal nidra. 

He was Vishnu embodied. 

Akrura found himself unable to stop admiring the ethereal beauty of Vishnu. Although ostensibly in the form of a human male, it was evident that the resemblance to mortal man was more a result of perception than the inherent reality. What he might in fact look like when viewed by other, alien senses, Akrura could not imagine. Yet with his limited human vision, this was all he could see—and it was still breathtakingly beautiful. 

Those eyes, those eyebrows, the line of that nose, the earlobes, the cheeks, the lips, the chin, his flowing throat, his low navel, his flat stomach, his powerful thighs, slender hips, shapely feet and calves…his toenails were as red as his eyes, and the reflection of celestial light cast a reddish glow on his entire lower body…He was adorned with bracelets on the arms and wrists and feet, a crown upon his head encrusted with large precious gems, earrings, sacred thread, and a belt. 

In his hands were a lotus, a conch, a disc and a club. 

Upon his chest was the tuft of hair known as Srivatsa. 

Upon his chest was also the Kaustabha jewel. 

Around his neck was a garland of flowers taken from deep within a sacred grove. 

Every detail was immeasurably infused with beauty and perfection. Even in his state of nidra, he nevertheless appeared to be laughing, at supreme ease, beyond all worldly anxieties or considerations, his eyes, lips, and entire face engaged in a smile that was infectious. Akrura felt his own heart lighten, all his anxieties wash away like dust washed by the river, a sense of great lightness and ease rise within him. It was an intoxication no soma could induce, a releasing of worldly cares. A dissolving of the calcified accumulation of a lifetime of emotional carriage, all melted and washed away as easily as a grimy frozen crust in a warm current.