KRISHNA CORIOLIS#6: Fortress of Dwarka (19 page)

“I too am a kshatriya in purpose and function. I am the protector of worlds, of all Creation. From time to time, I am requested by Brahma or petitioned by the other Devas to descend to this earthly realm and serve mortalkind by destroying the asuras that have unlawfully brought their conflict with us Devas into this realm. In this lifetime, I am descended into the race of the Yadus, in the house of Anakadundubhi, the one they call Vasudeva. Therefore in this birth, I am named Vasudeva, son of Vasudeva. I was sent here to deal with a multitude of asuras plaguing mortalkind in this age. Kalanemi was the first and among the fiercest of my foes in this birth. I slew him in his form as Kamsa.”
 

Images flashed and danced within Mukucunda’s mind’s eye, yet it was as if he were
within
the images themselves, and the events taking place
around
him in all dimensions. It was a mesmerizing spectacle. Though a warrior himself, he was awe struck at the prowess of the Lord in this form as Krishna Vasudeva. Through the Lord’s own essence, he was able to relive the Slaying of Kamsa, Putana, Kaliya, and numerous other wondrous events in Krishna’s life to date. Tears sprang from his battle-weary eyes, spilling to the icy cave floor where they froze into jewels of ice. Yet he was filled with the fiery heat of tapas and also the energizing warmth of Vishnu’s great brahman effulgence. “Truly, I am blessed to be given your darshan, Lord. It is a lifetime dream fulfilled.” His mortal voice echoed and rang within the stone cavern, for he had no power to project his voice through motes of brahman energy.
 

“I know this well, Mukucunda,” said Krishna gently. “I am sustained by the love and devotion of bhaktas such as yourself. How could I not fulfill your life’s ambition to come before me? It is on account of your long and dutiful devotion to my name and image that I appear here before you today. This is that very day of which the Devas spoke when they released you from your service and sent you back to this mortal realm. This is the day when I come before you, faithful servant, and ask of you: Speak. Name your desire. You are still owed a boon as reward for your great sacrifice and service to the cause of Righteousness. You have but to name your desire and it shall be fulfilled.”
 

Mukucunda was filled with ecstatic joy. He was realizing the fulfillment of all those eons of war, pain, suffering, and loneliness. He paid due homage to Krishna, performing his ritual duty as a bhakta and taking his heart’s fill of darshan of the Lord, for he knew that such a moment would never repeat again and he was blessed even among the blessed.
 

Finally, when he had completed his ritual obeisances and satisfied his spiritual urges, he said, “Oh Lord, the people of my realm are confused by your maya, this world of material pursuits that you created only as a temporary illusion befuddles them and they believe it is the only real world in existence. They seek petty happiness in their narrow domestic ruts but in fact, those daily disciplines are the very source of their unhappiness. The human body is made in your image, yet those who have earned the karmic right to be reborn as mortals fail to appreciate the value of their lives and merely eke out an existence driven by greed, worse than the animals who at least kill and eat to survive. The accumulation of wealth beyond one’s needs, the indulgence of sensual pursuits to the point of self-effacing abandon, pride in treasures of metal and symbolic riches, the arrogance of patriarchy, the lust for more mates, these are all failures of the flesh, as limited in its confines as a pot of mud or a wall of stone. In my past life, before the Devas came to enlist me in their war, I too fell prey to these temptations. I too ignored the mind’s lofty reaches to fall and grovel in greed and need, enslaved by the body’s desires. I was a king and thought myself a god. I was drunk with vanity, intoxicated by power, addicted to luxury.

“Now, in this moment of supreme revelation, I realize my folly. Your radiance has erased the shadows that blinded my eyes. I am no longer deluded, nor do I hanker after sensory objects. I see now that the former Me, who thought himself a god, was merely a thing destined to become faeces, worms and ashes, clad in gold finery, riding in shielded chariots, jousting with elephants in rut. God among men, I thought myself, yet I was not even a king. Merely a slave. A slave to sexual pleasures. A slave to desire for rich food, fine clothing, glittering baubles, voluptuous concubines. I was no more than a dog on a leash, led around the house by my desires to serve their fulfillment not my own.
 

“But now I have been given an opportunity of eons. The cobwebs of my mind have been brushed away. I see clearly now the purpose of my life. You have released me from the burden of flesh, the enslavement of desire, the addiction to power. You have freed me from the cycle of samskara itself. My wandering is ended. I am as fortunate as the most exalted Sadhus who spend a lifetime in the forest in solitude. I have been freed by Achyuta Himself! All mortals will envy me henceforth.”
 

Krishna smiled beatifically at Mukucunda, pleased at his words. “Speak, then, dearest Mukucunda. Speak your final wish and it will be granted.”
 

13

Mukucunda
prostrated himself and said, “Thanks to your effulgence, I am washed clean of all desire, Lord. As the Gangotri produces crystal-clear water of the highest purity, I too have been distilled, my attachments leached out of me by the power of your presence. The gunas of sattva, tamas and rajas which had accumulated from my time on the mortal plane have been removed from me, for you are the primordial one, free of all gunas, without taint or duality, monastic in your knowledge, supreme in purity. I wish nothing more than to be free of earthly miseries. I touch now your lotus feet and beg for shelter, Lord. Hear my distress, hear my plea.”
 

And as Mukucunda touched Krishna’s feet, Krishna bent and blessed him, raising him up. “Mukucunda, once you were a king among men. Now you are an emperor of great souls. You have resisted all the temptations of the six senses, enemies of all fleshly beings, and through your bhakta have seen fit to ask for the perfect boon. I give you leave now to roam the earth freely. Go where you will, you will be unharmed and unsinged. No desire will trouble you, no peril befall you. Wander in the great forests and practice pranayama, or ascend the highest peaks and sit in profound meditation, as you wish. You go with my hand sheltering you always. Absolve yourself of the sin of the kshatriya: cleanse yourself of the crimes of slaughter and violence, of life-taking and butchery. And when your days are done of their natural course, you will ascend to Swargaloka as is ordained and in your next birth shall return not only as a man, as you deserve through your righteous karma, but as a brahmana in my service. Thus shall the cycle of devotion and fulfillment be ever perpetrated: as devotee becomes priest and bhakta spans lifetimes. Go now, Mukucunda, go in peace.”

And with those blessed words, Krishna anointed Mukucunda with his sacred touch and permitted the great warrior of the gods to leave the grotto that had been his home for countless years. Circumambulating Krishna, Mukucunda departed with joined palms and a glad heart.
 

***

Mukucunda emerged from the cave and proceeded down the mountainside. He observed as he went that plants, animals, trees, and all things upon earth had diminished in size and beauty. In contrast, he was as a giant among men. Walking through places where people dwelled, and stared at by them while also gazing curiously at the denizens he passed, he puzzled as to how this diminishment of stature had occurred. Finally, he realized that a greater length of time must have passed while he fought for the Devas and later lay within the cave. So great a length that entire eons had changed and it was now Kali-Yuga.
 

Accepting this reality, he proceeded in a northward direction. Other men might have wandered for awhile, taking in sights and sounds, relishing the return to civilization, drinking in human company as one drinks soma. But Mukucunda’s heart and mind and soul were filled wholly with his Lord’s divinity. He desired nothing more than to ascend directly to the next life. His steps were firm and assured, his pathway distinct.
 

In due course, he found himself ascending to Gandhamadana, that holy region. There, he proceeded directly to Badarikashram, where he settled, absorbing himself in the undertaking of bhor tapasya, grueling ascetic practices, worshipping Hari in the very homeland of Nara-Narayana itself. His future and further life was thus assured.
 

***

Krishna descended from the Himavat ranges and gazed out upon the remains of the Yavana army. While the enormous force of fighting troops was extinguished to all but the last handful of men, the great grama train had been spared. This great caravan of wagons followed in the Yavana army’s wake, carrying the serving men and women, dancing girls and entertainers, cooks and weapon-repairers, carpenters and iron-workers that were all indispensable to keeping a traveling army requisitioned and provisioned at all times. Due to their heavy loads, they brought up the far rear, often arriving weeks after the frontlines made camp at a location. As a result, they were still many yojanas from the scene of their army’s destruction and were in fact, not many miles from Mathura itself.
 

Krishna whistled and like an eagle falling from the sky, his golden pushpak fell to earth in a near-vertical drop. It plummeted then came to a halt with its sarathi, the good Daruka, as unshaken as if he had merely driven the celestial vehicle from around the nearest field, instead of falling miles from the sky. He greeted his Lord warmly as Krishna climbed aboard the vaahan.
 

“The Yavana army was crushed like ants beneath a boulder,” he said. “I saw it all from above.”
 

Krishna nodded and instructed him where to go. As they came within sight of Mathura’s outlands, he told Daruka to slow the golden flying chariot, then indicated the sprinkling of wagons visible from here.
 

“The Yavana store train. All their wealth and booty collected on their journey from the Yavana islands, the treasures they wrestled from places on the way, the bounty, the prizes, the ransom, it is all in those wagons. We shall take it all home to Dwarka.”
 

Daruka stared. “There must be thousands of wagons, many tens of thousands of tons of treasure!”
 

“Exactly,” Krishna said, “I will not leave it for Jarasandha to find and claim. He does not deserve the spoils of this army or any army. That is the only reason why I claim it. Otherwise, I would have not cared if it had been buried in the avalanche that destroyed the Yavana army.”
 

“But, sire,” Daruka asked, “how will we transport such a great store all the way to Dwarka?” He looked at the chariot. Its well was just large enough for two men to stretch out side by side comfortably, no more. “Surely not in this pushpak? It would take a vehicle ten thousand times this size!”
 

Krishna smiled his enigmatic smile. “Not a vehicle ten thousand times this size, Daruka. Ten thousand vehicles of exactly this size. For a chariot must be large enough for a charioteer to control, must it not?”
 

Krishna wrinkled his brow. “Behold.”
 

Daruka turned and looked back at the great plain where only moments earlier, there had been nothing but the tall grasses waving and the distant ant like forms of the Yavana supply train approaching at snail’s pace.
 

The landscape was filled from end to end with thousands of gleaming golden chariots, each the exact replica of the one he commandeered.
 

“My Lord,” he said, his hands trembling for the first time since he had joined Krishna’s service—for while a sarathi’s heart might quiver like gelatine, his hands could never tremble in battle—“You work miracles with a wrinkling of your brow! But how are we to drive these ten thousand celestial pushpaks?”
 

Krishna smiled and clapped a hand on Daruka’s shoulder. It looked like a lithe effeminate hand but it felt like a rod of solid iron. “You shall, Daruka. You shall drive them all at once, merely by willing it. That is why I have made them all the same size as this chariot. Command this one, and all of them shall follow. Now let us relieve the Yavana supply troops of their wearisome burden. They may put up a little resistance but we have dealt with hardier challengers before our noonday meal. Come. The sooner we begin, the sooner we return home to Dwarka with our rich bounty.”
 

14

Jarasandha
’s rage was beyond control. It was rare for the God Emperor of Magadha to permit his emotions to go out of bounds but when such a rarity occurred, it was no less than a force of nature, a thing so terrible to behold that it drove fear into the hearts of his most hardened Mohini bodyguards. When Jarasandha raged, the earth itself trembled.
 

Today, he so enraged, even he trembled!
 

He felt his body shake with unresolved anger. He could easily have lashed out at the nearest Hijra warriors, his personal bodyguards, or anyone or anything else in sight, giving vent to some of this rage. But while on other occasions it would have instilled fear into the hearts of his followers, making each one determined never to give their master cause to find fault with their services, in the present case, it would invoke the opposite effect. Everyone knew that this was not an error on the part of Jarasandha’s soldiers or generals or allies. It was Jarasandha’s own doing. He had been duped by the Lord of Mathura, duped and deceived so cleverly and elegantly, that even he was now raging with fury. Nobody had ever seen Jarasandha so enraged and frustrated before, and many took secret pleasure in the sight, relishing the sight. For a tyrant is feared when he is powerful but mocked when he fails. They were mocking Jarasandha now, but were shrewd enough to do so silently within their hearts, for to show their ridicule for their master’s failure outwardly would be to invite instant death.