Week 7 Storytelling: The Death of Krishna

Dear Diary,

Today started out as a day full of misfortune, much like every other day in my life. I woke up this morning, hungry and alone. Not like, physically alone; my wife was there, of course, fixing breakfast for her mother and our three children. But alas, no eggs for me. My wife claims it's because of my high cholesterol, but I know the truth. My family doesn't respect me at all, for I am, as my mother in law calls me "a good-for-nothing waste of space who would be more useful as an ergonomically-designed footrest." Or at least, that's what I imagine she calls me behind my back. I have no real skills, or education, or redeeming personality traits. But you already knew all of that, Diary.

I got out of bed, and got ready for the day. That consisted of me staring into the mirror for nearly an hour, sinking deeper and deeper into the soulless void I saw in my own eyes. After feeling thoroughly refreshed, I made my way out of our small hut and into the woods. My wife kissed me on the cheek as left. "Have a good day, my darling!" she commands. My children wave and smile as I leave, very clearly beaming because of my departure. Even my mother-in-law taunts me, giving me a small lunch to carry with me. How my family wounds me!

I thought I might try to fight off my overwhelming existential angst by trying to find some food in the forest surrounding our meager dwelling. There's not much fertile ground nearby, because my wife has taken up all of it with her bountiful gardens. Most animals tend to avoid our house as well. I think they can sense the crushing despair emanating from my being. This day, however, I made my way to the crystal-clear river that runs near our house. I saw near the water, the most beautiful swan. I knew this was my one chance at redeeming myself, so grabbed my bow and readied an arrow. Crouching down, I took aim and released.

It was sometime between releasing the arrow and the impact that I realized what I took to be an elegant waterbird was actually a human foot. I ran over to this poor fellow, another victim of life, and found that he was gravely wounded. I knew then that it was too late, and that I had slain this unfortunate soul.

the hunter taking aim at Krishna's foot; source: wikimedia

 Author's Note: This story comes from Sister Nevedita's Cradle Stories of Hinduism, specifically, the section "Death of the Vrishnis." I thought that this whole episode surrounding Krishna's death was a little absurd, and I do tend towards the absurd things when I write. I thought it would be interesting to look at how the hunter saw the whole event, and maybe look into his back story. I thought I would add a bit of dark humor by having him be a character with a pretty good life who is just so overwhelmingly pessimistic that he imagines negative things.

Reading Diary B: Krishna by Sister Nevedita

Krishna kills the tyrant Kansa: source: wikimedia

There was definitely a lot of action in this second part of the stories of Krishna. We see the epic fight between Kansa's forces and Krishna, as well as the large battle that makes up the end of the Mahabharata. It was really interesting seeing this fight from a different perspective that paid more attention to Krishna's involvement. This is also true of the aftermath of the battle in seeing Gandhari's interactions with Krishna, and seeing how she cursed his clan to death. Again, it was really noticeable throughout all of the stories that Sister Nevedita focused mainly on the religious aspects of the stories, and there are a lot of times where she describes Krishna and the gods in relation to their Divinity and their more spiritual aspects.

I think the most interesting thing to take away from these stories are the various ways Krishna is represented. He's a bit of a mischievous child, and then a very cocky and rash warrior when he fights Kansa. After that, he seems to mature and calm a lot when we see him next, and a lot of people look to him for his wisdom later in life. The ending of Krishna's stories was a bit anticlimactic, I must admit. He gets shot by a hunter who mistook his foot to be a swan, and this wound is what ends him. It seems a bit strange to me that someone who has demonstrated a number of different powers and extraordinary abilities would be felled by a single shot, but I guess this just adds to the tragedy of the tale and serves to show the strength of Gandhari's curse

Reading Diary A: Krishna by Sister Nevedita

Statue of Krishna with his flute: Source: wikimedia

This week I decided to look at Sister Nevedita stories of Krishna. I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about Krishna, who was a very enigmatic character in Narayan's version of the Mahabharata. Sister Nevedita definitely skews her perspective on the stories towards more religious aspects, and this makes for an interesting contrasts with the other things I've read in this class so far. The first section starts with Krishna's birth, and Nevedita calls him "the Indian Christ-Child," which I'm not sure is entirely appropriate, but oh well. There are a lot of really interesting stories about Krishna's childhood in this first section, including the story about Brahma, who suspected that Krishna was actually an incarnation of Vishnu. Apparently, the easiest way to do this was to make a bunch of cows fall asleep in a cave to see if Krishna would be able to find them and then herd them back. This story is really interesting because we see some motivations of the gods, specifically Brahma who hasn't been talked about a lot in the other stories. It's a bit funny to think about the gods acting like a sort of rivals, keeping tabs on each other's activities and trying to make sure they're always one step ahead of the others. There were a lot of other interesting excerpts in this section, including the battle between the monstrous snake Kaliya and Krishna.