KRISHNA CORIOLIS#4: Lord of Mathura (6 page)

Those who were not as proficient as the others in sling-shooting got upset because they would not be able to touch Krishna first. They snatched the slingshots from the winners and threw them as far ahead as they could, even ahead of the herds in front. The winners went running to retrieve them but the others who had lost raced them and reached first, throwing the slings even further. So it became a race and the young calves, seeing their young masters and mistresses running ahead, increased pace, drawing moos of protest from their lactating mother cows. 

One of the slings landed in a clump of trees. Cuckoos roosting in the trees set off sharp calls, flying about in agitation, unaccustomed to mammals in their environment. The gopas imitated the cuckoos and climbed the trees, throwing the slings to one another to prevent the owners from retrieving them. The owners laughed good-naturedly and tried to chase down their slings. 

Young monkeys screeched from the trees, leaping from branch to branch, upset at these new hairless simians who had invaded their domain. The boys attempted to imitate them, hanging from branches and swinging while calling out in monkey voices. The herds caught up with them and trundled past as they continued their monkey-play. The gopis called them monkeys and cuckoos as they went past, giggling at their antics. Then they dismounted from the trees and ran again to catch up with the herds. 

When they reached a brook, they splashed through it, sending frogs leaping helter skelter in startled panic. The boys imitated the frogs, leaping in the water till they were soaked from head to foot. Soaked, but at least clean at last, if only for the moment, as their mothers would have commented if they had seen them then! 

In this manner, they made their way to the north-east woods, playing and shouting and engaged in tomfoolery, even their herds sharing in the infectious spirit of festivity. They barely noticed when the way through the trees grew darker and more shadowy, absent of monkeys, cuckoos, frogs and all other wildlife, or the fetid stench that filled the air in this particular neck of the woods. 

The herd slowed down, sensing something amiss, but the children drove them on relentlessly, too impatient to be cautious. Those that commented on the denseness of this part of the woods and the fetid odor were told by their friends that there was probably a swamp nearby. 

Radha had a moment of unease when she saw the calves and cows in front entering a place dark enough to be a cavern entrance, but then she recalled that it had been there earlier as well, and continued chatting with her gopi friends. The gopas were too excited and up to mischief to even notice much except that it had become darker. They incorporated this change of environment into their play, pretending to be bats swooping this way and that way blindly, deliberating banging into one another or brushing gently against the mother cows and patting their rumps affectionately. 

Slowly, the entire procession made its way into the open, waiting maw of the asura Agha. 

6

KRISHNA
felt the rumble of distant thunder and stopped playing his flute. 

He looked around. 

Balarama had gone exploring the pastures, seeking to measure their full extent. A runner had already come from the village, telling them that their father and the other elders were bringing the herds here and that Radha and the younger herders had already set off with the calf and mother herds. They would be reaching shortly. 

The sky was bright blue, fat shapely clouds drifting lazily by, casting undulating shadows on the sea of kusa grass, the wind shirring in the grass was a soothing accompaniment to his flute, and until a moment ago, he had been as close to yoganidra as it was possible to get on this mortal plane. The rumbling of distant thunder was a harsh counterpoint to this placid quietude. 

He realized he had felt the rumbling rather than simply heard it. 

There it was again. 

Like the rumbling of a stomach left too long unfed. 

Exactly
like that!

Except louder, much
much
louder. 

The ground beneath his feet shuddered noticeably this time, like a minor earthquake. The calves nearest to him lifted their heads long enough to stop chewing and moo indignantly. Their mothers stopped chewing too. Several of them turned to look in his direction. 

He raised a hand, calming them. 

Where was Balarama?

Krishna cast his inner eye outwards, travelling at the speed of a bird across the top of the tall grass, over the hill and down the next valley, then up the next rise and down the next dip, until he located his brother, still walking towards the far end of the pastures in a northerly direction. 

Balarama paused, sensing his brother’s questing consciousness and turned to look back the way he had come. His fair broader features frowned, understanding that there was something wrong. Even as far away as he was, he could feel a vestige of the tremors that Krishna was experiencing. 

Balarama turned and began running back to Krishna. The grass shirred around his pumping feet, staining his already grass-stained lower body greener. His muscular legs pounded the ground hard, bearing his bulk easily but not as swiftly as he would have liked at such a time. 

‘I’m coming, bhai,’ he said softly, knowing he would be heard even miles away. 

Krishna turned back and looked in the direction of the woods. That was the only way to get here. To either side of the woods, the landscape was dangerously broken and undulating, steep rocky rises and abruptly plummeting wadis. Dangerous enough for humans, much too risky for cattle. 

The only way to these new pastures was through the woods. And something was in the woods, intending harm to his friends and their herds. 

Krishna began running in the direction of the woods. Unlike Balarama, he ran with great lithness and athletic grace. His slender form was built for speed. He raced through the tall grass like a humming bird speeding back towards her nest. The calves and mother cows he had been herding looked back in dismay, lowing to one another to lament Krishna leaving them. 

He burst through the woods and came face to face with a monstrosity. 

Something that resembled a gargantuan earthworm was shattering tree trunks and cracking branches as it undulated. The dust and soil falling from its body suggested that it had freshly emerged from beneath the surface of the earth. It bucked and shuddered, its enormous length shivering as it shifted from side to side. It touched a sala tree a yard thick at the base and the tree trunk cracked with a resounding sound, the tree toppling over to crash down heavily. Monkeys and birds and animals screamed and chittered from elsewhere in the woods, but no animal or birds sounds were audible in the region of the bucking demon. 

Krishna understood that the creature must have emerged from the ground and insinuated itself into the woods slowly, gradually, moving perhaps a few feet at a time, then waiting for hours before moving again. Over the course of days, perhaps even weeks, it had taken up position in the darkest areas of the woods, then lain still, waiting. Like a serpent, it had intertwined itself between trees, looping and twisting sinuously until it covered a considerable area. He could only imagine the length of the beast from mouth to tail: miles certainly. Perhaps a whole yojana long? The bulk of its body was still inside the ground, he saw, and that was why it was moving so violently now. It was trying to retreat into its hole, to return underground where it could travel more easily through the subterranean caverns to which it was accustomed, there to consume its meal at leisure. 

He already knew what its meal consisted of: the calf herds and child cowherds. With the power of his inner eye he could see little Radha and the other young gopas and gopis alongwith their calf herds and mother cows, all inside the belly of the beast. They had been startled when the ground began moving underfoot and the world around them began to shake. Now, they were terrified, for they understood that this was no earthquake or tremor; they were inside some great creature’s maw and were about to be consumed. 

He could see them screaming and crying out plaintively, scared despite their inherent brave outlook, for how could they fight such a creature once they were within its body? They could hardly guess at what it even looked like and the fetid rank air within the beast’s body was already choking and sickening the children as well as the cattle. 

The question was why the creature had not consumed them already. All it had to do was gulp and swallow and every last child in Vrindavan old enough to mind the herds would be digested alive, slowly, agonizingly. The most merciful death would suffocation for lack of air. The most terrible would be a slow acidic digesting over days. 

‘I will not let that happen,’ Krishna said grimly. 

He raised his voice, raising his cowherd’s crook and shaking it at the towering beast. ‘I will not let you take them!’

At the sound of his voice, the beast ceased its shuddering. 

Suddenly, a section of its vast body rose up in the air, exactly like the head of a snake rising to open its hood. Except that the segmented body resembled a worm more than a snake and when the head rose up, it did not widen into a hood, merely opened to reveal a great maw, some fifty yards wide, and perfectly round. Blind and lacking any other sense organs, its maw opened in sections to reveal interlocking overlapping flaps of dusty grimy leathery hide that resembled an iris spiralling open. Within that giant maw, he saw an immense terrifying darkness, and within that darkness, several yards deep, he saw his friends and their herds, struggling to stay upright, leaning against one another or against the more sure-footed bovines, pale and very scared, crying with fear and incomprehension. Many were indignant or upset too: Krishna saw some of the bolder young gopas wield their slings, looking for a target. There was none. They could hardly fling stones about in the beast’s mouth; they would only hit their own friends or cattle. They were eager to fight but had no way to fight such a creature. Helpless and angry, they shouted to Krishna to do something. 

‘Release my friends!’ Krishna shouted. 

A deep rumbling awoke from inside the earth. It began from underground, and Krishna knew that it was coming from the part of the asura’s body that was still beneath the surface, deep within the earth. By the time it travelled to its maw and burst from the open orifice, it emerged as a cruel imitation of laughter. Lacking a mouth, the creature spoke with a mentally projected sound that resembled boulders gnashing against each other in an avalanche. 

it said. 

Krishna’s eyes blazed deep blue, his dark skin exuding a glow that cancelled the darkness of the worm’s shadow in the woods. 

‘Who are you, demon?’ Krishna demanded. 

‘You are a worm!’ Krishna said. ‘I will crush you underfoot.’ 

‘I command you to release them at once. They had nothing to do with the deaths I caused. I killed your demon kin. I am the one against whom you should direct your vengeance!’

Agha’s maw lolled this way then that for a moment as if considering Krishna’s words. 

‘I will be your meal, or you mine. That is between us and we shall settle it…once you release those innocents and set them back on the ground unscathed and alive.’

Agha’s maw lolled for another moment. Then the asura reached a decision. The giant worm head swayed and lowered itself to the ground in a clearing caused by its own retreat. 

The instant its mouth touched the ground, Krishna shouted to his fellow gopas and gopis. ‘Radha, Sridhara…my brothers and sisters of Vrindavan! Flee! Take your herds and flee from here.’

An exodus began, as the frightened children and cattle emerged from the maw of the gargantuan demon-worm, stepped once more upon solid earth, and backed away fearfully, gazing up at the great creature into whose mouth they had all trooped so unsuspectingly. Many were coughing and choking, some even spewing the contents of their belly, sickened by the stench and filth of the creature’s interior.

Balarama arrived just then, winded but spoiling for a fight. Speaking to Krishna with the mind-voice they had both used almost since birth to communicate with one another, he shouted silently:

Brother, I am here, shall we attack the creature together? 

‘No,’ Krishna said firmly. ‘You must lead Radha and the others with their herds to safety. Take them back home. Keep the elders and others away from this part of Vrindavan. Get as far away as possible. This battle may range over a great distance. I do not want anyone injured.’

Balarama’s face darkened when he heard that he was not to stay and fight. 

But then he looked up at the size and adjudged the length of the asura and knew that what Krishna said was wise and necessary. His natural propensity for aggression was subsumed by his unquestioning devotion to his brother. His anger subsided and was sublimated instantly into energy, the energy he would need to do as Krishna bade.