Bhagavatam · Kaliya

Before beginning that day’s story, Parikshit rested his palms on his knees and looked at Shukadeva.

“Bhagavan, something has been lodged in my mind since yesterday. You told me he was tiny, that he stole butter, that he slept in his mother’s lap. And then that same child leaped into the black pool of the Yamuna, a place great warriors were afraid even to peer into. This I cannot understand, Munivar. So much tenderness and so much daring, how do they live in one body?”

A faint smile moved through Shukadeva’s eyes. “Rajan, what you are calling daring was never daring for him at all. Courage is needed where some fear sits inside and has to be crossed. In him that fear simply did not exist, so going down was as easy for him as it is for any child of yours to run out into a courtyard. Hear the story. Then see for yourself what the one who went down into that black pool came back having done.”

He paused a moment, then began.

The Yamuna’s water had once been sweet. Clear, cool, good for everyone. Then, in one stretch of it, in a deep pool at the river’s very middle, a serpent came and settled, and there he held the water age after age. His name was Kaliya. Immense, deadly with venom, a son of Kadru. He had one hundred and one hoods, and set into the crest of each hood were glowing red jewels. His poison ran so strong that the water around him turned black, and even the vapor rising off that black water carried poison in it.

There was an old story behind why he had come to live here. His real home was Ramanaka Dvipa, an island in the middle of the sea where all the serpents lived. A rule ran there. On every new moon, each serpent clan had to leave one serpent beneath an appointed tree as an offering to Garuda, because between Garuda and the serpents there was an ancient feud. Kaliya would not accept this. He was drunk on the pride of his venom and his strength. He withheld his own offering, and worse, he ate the offerings the other serpents set out for Garuda. Garuda would not stand for it. He struck Kaliya such a blow with his golden left wing that the serpent fled wounded and came to hide in this very pool of the Yamuna. This one pool was closed to Garuda, because long ago, in the days of King Mandhata, an ascetic, the sage Saubhari, had done his practice in these waters among the fish, and when Garuda swooped down and carried off the chief of them, the rest were left grieving, and the sage pronounced a curse: if Garuda ever set foot in this pool again, he would pay for it with his life. In the shelter of that curse Kaliya sat fearless. The venom he had carried here into hiding had now become his pride.

Slowly that poison began to spread through the whole Yamuna. The people of Vrindavan suffered. Cows went there to drink and dropped dead. Birds flying overhead touched the vapor of that black water and fell without folding their wings, dead. Even the grass and the trees along the banks had been scorched.

One day Krishna was grazing the cows right there with his band of boys. Balarama was not with them that day. Krishna looked at the fouled pool. Subduing the wicked was the very purpose of his avatar, and a serpent whose venom had poisoned even this playground of his was not going to be allowed to stay.

On the bank stood a very tall kadamba tree. Old, and the one green thing the poison had spared while everything else along the water stood scorched. One of its branches leaned out over the pool. Krishna tightened the cloth at his waist and climbed the kadamba. He gripped the branch, looked at the water for one moment, slapped his arms like a wrestler, and leaped.

Straight into the middle pool of the Yamuna, into Kaliya’s own house.

The plunge of a single boy sent that heavy water leaping as if someone had shaken it from its roots. Already seething with poison, it boiled over, its red and yellow waves tossing out four hundred arm-lengths on every side. The cowherd boys screamed in terror, “Krishna! Krishna!”

In that deep water Krishna began to leap and plunge like an elephant in rut, sending up great sheets of spray. The strike of his arms rang loud through the water. Kaliya took in the world through his eyes, the way every serpent does, and what reached him now was unmistakable: someone was in his house, in his kingdom, holding him in contempt. That he could not bear.

All one hundred and one of Kaliya’s hoods rose at once. He bit the dusky boy at his vital points and locked him inside the coils of his entire body. Krishna vanished so completely into those coils that nothing at all showed above the water. And in the way of a mortal boy he let himself stay like that, bound and unmoving, for the better part of an hour, a whole muhurta.

Up in Vrindavan, evil omens broke out at once in the sky, on the earth, and in the body. Nanda and the other gopas saw the omens first, then learned that today Krishna had gone out to graze the cows without Balarama. One thought seized their minds, that some harm might have come to Krishna, and in a desperate longing to see their beloved Kanhaiya they left home and doorstep and set out. Along the path they kept finding the Lord’s footprints, marked with the lotus, the barley grain, the goad, the thunderbolt, and the flag, and following those very prints they pressed on toward the bank of the Yamuna.

When they reached the riverside, they saw from a distance Krishna lying motionless in the grip of Kaliya’s body, the cowherd boys fallen senseless at the edge of the pool, and the cows, bulls, and calves lowing in anguish. At that sight all the gopas collapsed where they stood, undone by grief, remorse, and fear. They had placed everything they had, their very lives, in that one boy.

The gopis lived on the memory of Krishna’s warmth, his sweet smile, his loving glances and honeyed words. Seeing their darling locked in a serpent’s coils, the three worlds turned desolate before their eyes. Mother Yashoda would have flung herself into that very pool after her boy, but the gopis held her fast, and the same anguish burned in their own hearts. Those in whom some awareness remained began recounting to Yashoda Krishna’s beloved lilas, the slaying of Putana and the rest, to steady her. Most simply lay where they had fallen, barely conscious. A little way off, in this same crowd, stood Balarama. He did not tremble, and he did not move toward the water. He knew his younger brother, and he knew there was nothing in that water that could do the boy any harm, and even now a quiet laugh rose in him, which he kept to himself. He said nothing. And when Nanda and the others began to wade into the pool after Krishna, Balarama stopped them, persuading some, restraining some by force, steadying others with patient words.

But then, still inside the water, Krishna began to swell his body, to spread it, to make it heavy. Knot by knot, Kaliya’s tight coils began to loosen, until the serpent’s own body ached under that growing weight and let him go. Kaliya reared back, every hood lifted high, hissing, his eyes burning like heated iron, poison-breath streaming from his mouths.

Then Krishna began to circle him. He moved the way Garuda moves, wheeling around the great snake as though it were a game, and the snake turned with him, forked tongues flicking at the corners of its mouths, a fire of poison pouring from its very glances, waiting for the one opening it needed to strike. Round and round they went, until the whirling wore the serpent’s strength down to nothing. Its heads still swayed upright. Krishna reached out, pressed them low, and sprang up onto the loftiest hood of all.

And he began to dance.

The first teacher of all the arts began to keep time on that very hood. The first footfall landed, and a shudder ran the whole length of Kaliya’s body. The rub of the red jewels set in the hood turned Krishna’s small, lotus-soft soles a deeper red, as if someone had painted them with mahavar. One hood would bow, and he would spring onto the next. Whichever head the serpent raised in fury, hissing, leaving the bowed one behind, Krishna leaped onto that one too, striking it down under his feet. One hundred and one hoods, and a beat on every hood.

Under the water, every footfall sent out a throb that shook even the soil of the banks. Above the water another scene entirely was unfolding. The Lord’s beloved devotees, gandharvas and siddhas and devas and charanas and celestial women, had gathered in the sky. When they saw that the Lord wished to dance, they took up mridangas, dhols, and nagara drums with great love. Sweet song rose, and flowers began raining down from above, drifting on the black water. On one side the beat of the mridanga, on the other the tap of a small foot, and somewhere between them the faint hush of falling flowers.

Kaliya had seized the boy meaning to crush the life out of him. Now that very grip had turned against him. Whichever hood he raised in pride, the soft foot came down on it, growing just a little heavier, and under its pressure venom began to pour from his mouths and nostrils, mixed with blood. His hoods broke down one by one, his life-force ebbed, every knot of his body slackened. The poison he had counted all his life as his strength and his pride was now being wrung out of him, and with every drop it seemed his arrogance was draining away too. At last, reeling, he slid toward unconsciousness.

And Krishna? He was dancing. His breath never even quickened. On his lips stayed that faint, half-opened smile, as if the whole thing were nothing more than play.

The cowherds on the bank forgot even to blink. The soft scent of flowers drifted through the air, and from far off came the throb of the mridanga. What was happening here, no one could grasp.

Then from within the water Kaliya’s wives, the naga women, rose to the surface. The sight of their husband’s condition had thrown them into great alarm. Fear had left their clothes and ornaments in disarray, their braids undone. Placing their small children before them, they all lay prostrate together on the water and folded their hands. They were not asking Krishna to halt the punishment. They knew this punishment was just, that for the venom filling this serpent there could be no other atonement. They wanted one thing alone, that their husband’s life be spared.

“Natha, this avatar of yours exists for the very purpose of punishing the wicked,” they said, their voices trembling. “Our husband was born into a tamasic womb, into the Krodhavasha line, the serpents ruled by wrath, angry to the root of his nature. Even the punishment you are giving him we count as your grace, for the dust of your feet came to Lakshmi herself only after years of tapas. But we are your servants. Grant us the life of our lord.”

Krishna stilled the beat of his foot and looked at them.

By then Kaliya’s awareness had begun to return. Drawing breath with great difficulty, humbled, he too folded his hands. “Natha, we are wicked from birth, tamasic, wrathful. To abandon our own nature lies beyond our power. This whole creation is yours, and this venomous nature of ours is your making too. Now do as you see fit: show grace, or give punishment.”

Krishna said, “Serpent, you must not stay here any longer. Return with your kinsmen, your children, and your wives to the sea, to your Ramanaka Dvipa.”

Kaliya hesitated a moment. It was the dread of Garuda, waiting out there by that very island, that had driven him into hiding in the first place. Krishna read his heart. “Do not worry about Garuda. The mark of my feet is on your hoods now. When Garuda sees a head my foot has rested on, even he will stop. He will never eat you.”

Kaliya bowed to him, honored him, circled him once in respect, and then, hands folded, turned back with his wives and children toward Ramanaka Dvipa.

And in that instant the Yamuna’s water turned clear again. The poison left it, and the water itself became sweet as amrita.

Krishna came up out of the pool, adorned with a divine garland, fragrance, fine garments, a priceless gem, and golden ornaments. The cowherds who had lain senseless woke as though life had returned to their bodies, and they crowded around to hold him. Balarama, who had known all along, caught his younger brother to his chest and laughed. The family priests came to Nanda and told him his boy, seized by Kaliya, was free again, and Nanda, too glad to hold it in, gave cows and gold to the brahmins in thanks. And then Yashoda, who had her lost child back, lifted her boy into her lap and pressed him to her heart. Tears of joy fell from her eyes again and again.

Krishna’s hair was still wet. The redness of his soles, rubbed into them by Kaliya’s jewels, still remained.

And he was laughing, as if what had just happened truly had been only a dance.

Shukadeva stayed silent a while.

Parikshit said softly, “Munivar, now I understand. There was no fear in him to cross in the first place. Into the pool where everyone else saw death, he simply went down to play.”

Shukadeva nodded, then paused a moment before speaking. “Notice one more thing, Rajan. Think about why Kaliya was in that pool at all. He had fled to it and hidden in it, in dread of Garuda, sheltered by an old sage’s curse. All his venom seethed inside him, and that seething venom was the thing he kept mistaking for his strength. What Sri Hari did was gentler than killing. He kept time on that very venom, hood by hood, until the last of it had flowed out. The day the poison inside drained away, the same head that had bowed to no one finally came down. And the foot that crushed him left a mark on his hoods before which even Garuda stops.”

Parikshit said nothing. For one moment, the count of seven days lifted from his mind.