Week 12 Storytelling: Krishna's Mother

Read the updated version of this story on my Indian Epics portfolio blog here: link.

Image on YouTube

I clearly remembered giving birth to a girl, yet when I awoke the next morning, the child was a boy, and he was blue. Maybe I was so distracted by the pains of childbirth that I was not able to think clearly… I had decided that I would call my girl Maya, but I then decided to go with the name Krishna. Also, my husband had brought another baby to be cared for by me, a boy, Balram.

I was so confused when people came from far-off cities to meet Krishna, for I didn’t know any of them and they wished to pay him respect. There was none of the same excitement for Balram.

The two boys grew up to be quite the troublemakers, and I often had to vouch for them when the neighboring women came to the house and claimed that they had stolen butter. At first, I did not want to believe that I could have raised thieves, but I eventually began to punish the boys quite severely, for surely not all of the women who came around could be mistaken.

One day, Balram (the gentler of the two) came inside and told me that his brother had eaten mud. I don’t know why anyone, even a naughty child, would put mud in their mouth, but I went outside to find Krishna. I told him to open his mouth at once, and he did so reluctantly.

What I saw when Krishna opened his mouth I still cannot comprehend. I did not see mud. Instead, I saw everything. Inside my child’s mouth were all of the universes in their entirety, every being that had ever lived and died, the past, the present, and the future of the cosmos… all inside of Krishna.

My mind was on the brink of being lost forever in the celestial swirls, for there is simply nothing more overwhelming than what I experienced that day. However, Krishna shut his mouth and was simply a child cowering at his angry mother, and my mind returned.

It was then that I realized that my son, Krishna, was no regular little boy. He was an avatar, the reincarnation of Vishnu himself.

Author’s Note: This week, I watched the Epified Krishna videos on YouTube, and I was taken by the story of Yashoda, Krishna’s “mother.” King Kamsa of Mathura had imprisoned his sister and her husband because it was prophesied that their eighth child would be the one to kill him. When his sister has her eighth child in prison, there is divine protection that watches over the couple and commands the husband to exit the opened cell with the baby boy. He goes outside and everything is still. Then, he crosses a river and switches his newborn for Yashoda’s newborn girl, Maya. When Yashoda awakes, she is confused as to how she now has a baby boy instead of a girl. Yashoda then experiences many bizarre events while caring for Krishna, such as being visited by people from all over the world for blessings, finding Krishna playing next to a dead demon, and this episode in which she sees the entirety of the cosmos in Krishna’s mouth. I kept the plot of the story the same, but the storytelling is completely different as it is in Yashoda’s perspective in order to portray her confusion while raising the reincarnation of Vishnu.

If you would like to watch these videos, click here: link.

“Epified Krishna .” YouTube, Epified.