Govardhana
By Ramesh Menon
A peaceful month after the slaying
of Dhenuka, there is trouble from another quarter,
which Krishna brings upon himself. He does not
want the cowherds to make their yearly offering
to the king of the Devas at an Indra yagna,
as has been their custom since time immemorial,
since before their fathers crossed into the
land of Bharata.
“Why should you worship
Indra when I am born among you? The Deva’s
head is swollen because the kin of Vishnu’s
Avatara still bring him offerings.”
“Listen to me,” he
tells his confused cowherds, who are not yet
used to him being the Incarnation. “It
isn’t right for you to make offerings
to Indra, when it is Mount Govardhana that protects
us. Your immortal souls suffer because you worship
a lesser god.
“Indra feeds on your offerings
and on your spirits. Snared by his lascivious
dreams of Devaloka, you forget the direction
of your lives. This is more dangerous than being
attacked by rakshasas; it delays your moksha
by a hundred births.
“Why don’t you worship
Govardhana instead?”
They puzzle over this novel philosophy,
never expounded in the world before: that the
worship of lesser gods is an impediment to salvation.
But once they have examined his argument, they
can’t fault what he says. In their hearts
they know they have become Indra’s devout
slaves; and the Deva does keep them fettered,
childlike. Nor does he even deign to help them
in their times of need and danger.
Nanda says to Krishna, “We
are afraid to stop worshipping Indra. We fear
his fury if we seek Govardhana’s blessing
instead.”
Krishna smiles. “Indra is
powerless to harm the least among the faithful.
And you are the chosen. I will protect you from
the Deva, and then perhaps you also will believe
in me.”
“But why worship a mountain?”
“The mountain is replete
with the Brahman. Unlike Indra, the mountain
wants no worship. It is an ancient master living
on earth to show you the way to moksha.”
Krishna senses his battle half
won already, another knot coming loose in the
sacred thread he has come to unravel. False
worship may not be an obvious sin, but it is
enshackling. The Avatara has come to set men
free from the bonds of light, as much as those
of evil. He has come to break all bonds.
“The mountain is beyond
desire!” Krishna cries. “Make your
offering to the mountain.”
Thousand-eyed Indra is livid.
He summons Samvartaka, his host of thunderclouds.
“Bhoh! Bhoh!” Indra
roars at the belligerent thunderheads. The lord
of Devaloka is frightened. What will he be reduced
to if mortal men stop worshipping him, as that
upstart is encouraging them to?
Even to the gods, Krishna is still
much of a mystery. The Devas have always enjoyed
ancient sway over mankind, and Krishna is only
a human boy after all, of very transient flesh
and blood. Of course, the ones of light know
about the prophecy that Narayana himself shall
be born as a man, at this conjunction of the
ages. But what real proof was there that Krishna,
who is no kshatriya as Rama was, but just a
cowherd, is the Avatara?
“Arrogant Nanda has abandoned
my yagna,” cries Indra. “He thinks
Krishna can save him from my wrath. The cowherds
must be taught a lesson they will never forget.
“Fly to Vrindavana, my stormtroop;
drown their miserable herd with a storm like
they have never seen. Let them feel the anger
of the king of the Devas. Go. I follow on Airavata.”
Samvartaka descends on Vrindavana.
The world goes dark around the jungle and the
cowherd village, as bank upon bank of sinister
cloud scud rumbling into the sky. It is the
day after the cowherds had diverted their offerings
from Indra to Mount Govardhana. It was easy
enough for Krishna to talk, but how can mere
gypsies stand up to the might of the king of
the Devas?
The villagers flee home from the
pasture when they see the omens. They huddle
within their huts, herding as many of their
cows and calves with them as they can squeeze
indoors.
Once they fill the sky within
the circle of the horizon, the clouds erupt
in earthshaking thunder, and whiplashes of lightning
which shred the darkness into shards of fear.
White cows low piteously in the
gloom, women and children scream; and then the
rain comes down in sheets. Earth and sky seem
as one in that downpour. All creation seems
to be made from just the element of water: deluge
without beginning or end, Pralaya!
The herd panics. Lowing in fright,
it dashes out from the frantic claustrophobia
of the huts, where man and beast mill together
in equal terror. The cattle would rather die,
out in the familiar open.
Gopi women scream themselves unconscious.
Children clutch their fathers’ hands;
their shrieks are drowned by the roar of the
storm.
Outside, all is flood. The water
swells angrily into the meagre huts. At first
just calves are washed away by the current.
But quickly, the Yamuna is in vicious spate,
breaking her banks, flashing across pasture
and forest.
Cows and bulls begin to perish
as well, swept away by the cataract. The storm
rages on in darkness, with heart-stopping cracks
of thunder and gashes of blue lightning that
connect heaven and earth.
Someone cries shrilly, “Where
is Krishna?”
At that moment, a voice speaks
from the sky, a God’s voice.
“This is what you get for
worshipping Indra for generations. It is only
your offerings and your cringing that the Deva
loves. But come and see how the mountain loves
you.”
The rain has stopped. Thunder
still echoes, but weak and distant. Only Yasodha
and Nanda venture from their hut to answer Krishna’s
call. When they do, standing knee-deep in the
flow, faces turned skywards, they begin to laugh
at the sight which greets them outside, to laugh
like children. Hearing them so full of joy,
the others also emerge, and they too witness
the miracle of Indra being thwarted in his revenge.
High above them, suspended between
heaven and earth, Krishna holds aloft the mountain
in his hand. He holds Govardhana inverted above
Vrindavana,a living awning of earth, rock and
forest.
Grown into a God, Krishna with
the mountain dominates the sky. As the cowherds
watch, they see:
His body was no longer mere flesh
and blood, but made of light, as he absorbed
the lightning from Indra’s storm. Krishna
shone with the electric network coiled around
him like writhing serpents, and his laughter
echoed above the thunder, belittling it.
Then, the mountain in his hand
began to glow within itself with a fabulous
flame. Suddenly, it was no longer made of its
earth, rock, tree, and forest, with mists and
streams in its valleys; but of sheerest crystal.
Govardhana had turned into an iridescent pyramid
in the Avatara’s hand: an archetypal pyramid
of infinite faces, refracting spectral beams
down whenever the lightning pierced it.
He too, Krishna vast beyond imagining,
was made of the same lucent stuff; though he
was flesh and blood as well, as was Govardhana
in his hands. The cowherds stood transfixed.
That breathing pyramid, which
covered the sky so no drop of rain fell down
to the earth below, began to change colours.
The mountain glowed virescent emerald first,
then resonant turquoise, then breathtaking,
lucific crimson; and quickly, every other fluorescent
hue, changing faster and faster: a symphony
of light.
The gopas saw that deep within
it, at its blinding core, a heart pulsed. Krishna
also glowed with that splendour, within and
out his God’s body.
Now, crystal pyramid and Blue
God began to blaze brighter than suns, until
at flashpoint the mountain and he were a single
coruscating Being out of purest fantasy. The
God was the mountain and the mountain the God;
both of them neither stone nor flesh, yet these
too, and more: out of dreams.
Then Krishna’s huge laughter,
the living mountain’s immense laughter,
transformed itself into Pranava, a reverberant
AUMmmmm. All the world and the sky with all
its stars were just the precious syllable. At
its immaculate end, its echo was the sublime
point, holy Bindu which contained the galaxies
within itself, their beginning and end.
Then, silence: perfect, complete.
Earth, sky and stone were transported to another
realm when time scarcely was. Within that chasmic,
blissful silence the villagers stood spellbound,
unaware of themselves.
At the very seed of the silence
a song sprouted, a song which was that primeval
silence, a lone flute song, plaintive, yet full
of the gayest celebration. The mountain reappeared
in the sky, now Govardhana again of great crags
and forests, of waterfalls and clouds clinging
to his peaks.
The heavenly pyramid was gone,
and Krishna, too, had vanished from the air.
He had grown human-sized again, and wandered
among sky-floating Govardhana’s green
forests. They rang with his timeless song, drowning
Indra’s storm, lifting the cowherds out
of their terror, and out of themselves entirely,
on a tide of ecstasy.
The seven days of vision that
the mountain and the God stay aloft, shutting
out the storm, seem no more than some moments
to the gopas. Until Indra, raging impotent on
high, turns his white elephant home, his battle
lost, his bonds on the minds of the cowherds
broken forever.
Not unmoved, the king of the Devas
swears, “This cowherd is the Brahman!”
The day after Indra’s vengeful
storm the world seems washed clean. Safe again
under cerulean skies, the gopas are not certain
whether Krishna’s dazzling miracle was
any more than a hallucination.
They, not Nanda but the others,
say to Krishna, “You quelled Kaliya, you
killed Dhenuka, and now you’ve lifted
the mountain to save us. You are Nanda and Yasodha’s
boy, but your deeds are Godly. Why, you vanquished
the king of the Devas before our eyes.
“Krishna, what are you?
Are you a Deva, a Danava, a Yaksha, or a Gandharva?
We must know today.”
Krishna grows very quiet; his
sermonal aspect of the past few days has vanished.
After all, he has taught not only the simple
cowherds a lesson but the king of the Devas
one. So now he pretends to be piqued by what
they ask. Perhaps he is really annoyed that
the people among whom he has grown find it so
hard to accept him for what he is: a phenomenon,
certainly, but all the same just their Krishna.
“If, gopas, you aren’t
ashamed to be related to me,” says the
Blue God to them, “why think of me in
any other way? I am neither Deva nor Gandharva,
not Yaksha or Danava. If you love me and I deserve
your love, you must think of me as your kinsman.
I have been born into your clan, haven’t
I? Then, that is the only way to look at it.”
He turns and walks out of their
council. They sit in silence for a while, each
wrapped in thoughts too deep to share.
Then from a way off they hear
Krishna’s flute. The birds of the jungle
all burst into song in sympathy with him, and
the sun breaks cover from behind the last straggles
of Indra’s storm.
