Part 9 of 12 · 14 minThe Moon in the Milk Pot

Ages passed. The snows of Kailasa melted and fell again more times than anyone could count. Satya Yuga, the age of truth, gave way to Treta Yuga, when Sri Rama walked the earth with his bow. Treta gave way to Dwapara. And in the Dwapara Yuga, on the western edge of Bharata, where the sea is green and the wind smells of salt, there rose a golden city called Dwaraka.

Its walls were so bright that sailors far out at sea used them to find their way home. Its streets were paved with stone, and its gardens were full of parrots. And in its palace lived the prince everybody loved: Sri Krishna.

You know Krishna. Everybody does. He was the naughty little boy of Gokulam who climbed onto a mortar to steal butter from a pot hanging from the ceiling. He was the child who lifted the Govardhana hill on his little finger and held it up for seven days like an umbrella, to keep the cows and cowherds safe from the rain. He was the cowherd whose flute made even the Yamuna river slow down to listen.

By now he was a grown man, a prince of the Yadava clan, wise and brave and full of laughter. But in his heart, he was still a cowherd. And that is where our part of the story begins. Not in a throne room. In a cowshed.

It was evening in the month of Bhadrapada. The rains had just passed, and everything smelled of wet earth. Krishna had slipped away from the palace, as he often did, and walked down to the royal cowsheds at the edge of the city.

A small boy was already there. His name was Madhu. He was about seven, with a cowherd's stick taller than himself and a cloth tied around his head, and he looked after the calves. When he saw Krishna coming, he jumped up so fast that he dropped his stick.

"Swami! You came again!"

"Of course I came," said Krishna, ruffling his hair. "Where else can a prince find someone who talks to calves better than he does?"

Madhu grinned from ear to ear. He loved these evenings. The prince of Dwaraka would sit on a low wooden stool, just like any cowherd, and milk the cows with his own hands, and tell Madhu stories about Brindavan.

"Which cow tonight?" asked Madhu.

"Kamala, of course," said Krishna, and a big white cow with soft brown eyes turned her head and mooed, as if she had been waiting.

Krishna sat down beside her. Madhu brought him a shining brass pot. The lamps in the shed were not lit yet. The sky outside was turning from orange to purple to deep blue. Krishna began to milk, and the milk hissed into the pot, chhurr, chhurr, chhurr, warm and white and foaming.

"Tell me the Govardhana story again," said Madhu, sitting cross-legged in the hay.

"You have heard it a hundred times."

"A hundred and one, then."

So Krishna told it, while he milked. He told how the rain came down like arrows, and how the people ran, and how he said, "Come, come under the mountain," and lifted it like a lid. Madhu held up his own little finger and stared at it, as though it might lift something too.

Kamala licked Krishna's hair with her rough tongue, and he laughed and pushed her nose away.

The pot was almost full now. The moon had come up behind the shed. Its light slipped in through the open doorway and fell across the floor, across the hay, across Krishna's knees.

And Krishna looked down into the pot.

There, floating on the smooth white surface of the milk, silver and perfect, was the reflection of the moon.

Krishna's hands went still.

Madhu noticed at once. Children always notice when grown-ups go quiet. "Swami? What happened? Is there a fly in the milk?"

"No fly," said Krishna softly. He did not look up at the sky. He did not need to. "Madhu, what day is it today?"

Madhu counted on his fingers. "It's… it's the fourth day after the new moon. Chavithi! Amma made kudumulu this morning. She put a clay Vinayaka on the shelf and told me not to look at the moon tonight." His eyes went very wide. "Swami. Did you look at the moon?"

"Not at the moon," said Krishna. "Only at the milk. But the moon was in it."

"Does that count?"

Krishna smiled, but it was a thoughtful smile. "I think," he said, "we are going to find out."

Now, you might be wondering: why should Krishna, of all people, worry about an old curse? Wait. Something was already on its way to Dwaraka that would make that curse come true. And it was very, very shiny.

In Dwaraka lived a rich nobleman named Satrajit. Satrajit was a great devotee of Surya, the sun god. Every morning for years he stood in the sea up to his waist, facing the rising sun, and offered water from his cupped hands. He did this through summer and through storm. And at last, one dawn, the sun god himself appeared before him, so bright that Satrajit had to cover his eyes.

"Satrajit," said Surya, "you have been faithful. Take this."

He placed in Satrajit's hands a jewel.

It was called the Syamantaka Mani. It was the size of a hen's egg and it glowed like a tiny sun. But its brightness was only the beginning. Every single day, if it was kept by a good and honest person, it gave eight bharas of gold. A bhara is a very heavy load, so heavy that one strong man can barely carry it. Eight of those, every day! And wherever the jewel was kept, there would be no famine, no sickness, no drought, no fear of snakes, no fear of thieves, no fear of fire.

Satrajit tied the jewel on a chain around his neck and walked back into Dwaraka.

What happened next, the people of Dwaraka talked about for years.

The gatekeepers saw a blaze of light coming up the road and fell flat on their faces. The flower sellers dropped their baskets. A woman drawing water let go of her pot, and it rolled all the way down the street, dhong, dhong, dhong. Children climbed onto walls and pointed.

"The sun god is coming! Surya Bhagavan has come down from the sky!"

A great crowd came running to the palace. They burst into the hall where Krishna was sitting with the elders.

"Krishna! Krishna! The sun god is walking through the city! He must have come to see you!"

Krishna walked out onto the palace steps, shaded his eyes, and looked down at the dazzling figure coming up the road. Then he began to laugh.

"That isn't the sun god," he said. "That is our Satrajit. He is wearing a jewel. A very, very big jewel."

The crowd looked again, squinting, and saw that under all that light there was a man with a rather pleased face and a slightly sunburnt nose. They laughed too, a little embarrassed, and went back to their work. But nobody stopped talking about the jewel.

Satrajit put the Syamantaka in a shrine in his house. Every day it gave its gold. His storerooms filled up. His family wore silk. And Satrajit grew prouder, and at the same time, more afraid. Because when you have something everybody wants, you begin to think everybody wants to take it.

One day Krishna came to visit him.

He came politely, with a smile, and sat and drank buttermilk, and admired the house. Then he said, "Satrajit, that jewel is a wonderful gift. Think of what it could do for all of Dwaraka. If it were kept in the treasury of our king, Ugrasena, its gold could feed every poor family in the city, and its blessing would protect every home. Would you think about offering it to the king?"

Satrajit's face went stiff as wood.

"The sun god gave it to me," he said. "To me. Not to the king. Not to you."

"It was only an idea," said Krishna gently. "It is your gift. Keep it." And he finished his buttermilk, thanked him, and left, and did not say another word about it, then or ever.

But Satrajit could not stop thinking about that conversation. At night he lay awake. Why did Krishna ask? Krishna was clever. Krishna always got what he wanted in the end. He had outwitted demons and kings. Surely he was just waiting.

Not long after, Satrajit's younger brother Prasena came to him with a bow over his shoulder.

"Brother, I am going hunting in the forest. Lend me the Syamantaka. I want to wear it. Imagine the look on the deer's faces!"

Satrajit hesitated. But Prasena begged, and Prasena was his little brother, so at last he hung the chain around Prasena's neck.

Prasena rode out of the city gates at sunrise, on a tall brown horse, with the jewel blazing on his chest. People waved. He waved back, very pleased with himself. He rode along the coast road and turned inland, into the thick green forest beyond the hills, where the trees closed overhead and the light turned dim and green. The jewel glittered between the leaves like a lamp. Birds went quiet as he passed.

Deep in that forest, something with golden eyes lifted its head from a stream and watched the light coming closer.

Prasena did not come back that evening.

He did not come back the next day, or the next. Satrajit sent servants to search. They came back with torn clothes and scratched arms and nothing else. Satrajit walked up and down his courtyard, wringing his hands. And in his frightened, proud mind, a thought grew and grew until it filled everything.

"Krishna asked me for the jewel," he said aloud. "I said no. And now my brother has gone into the forest wearing it, and vanished. And who goes into the forests more than Krishna? Krishna has killed my brother and taken the Syamantaka."

He did not keep that thought to himself.

Here is how a rumour travels. Watch.

First, Satrajit said it to his servants. The servants, shocked, whispered it in the kitchen. The cook told the milkman. The milkman told the women at the well.

At the well, the women put down their pots. "Did you hear? They say Krishna killed Prasena for the sun jewel." "No! Krishna? Our Krishna?" "Well… he did ask for the jewel. Everyone knows he asked."

By afternoon it was in the market. The spice seller told the bangle seller. The bangle seller told her customers. A man selling coconuts shouted to a man selling mangoes, "Why else would Prasena disappear, eh? Tell me that!" And the mango man, who had never thought about it before, found himself nodding.

By evening it was in the palace. Some of the Yadava elders fell silent when Krishna walked into the hall. A few of them looked at the floor. One old uncle, who had held Krishna on his lap when he was a baby, said loudly, "Nonsense!" but even he did not quite meet Krishna's eyes.

And then it reached the children.

Down near the cowsheds, a group of boys was playing. One of them, a big boy with a loud voice, said, "My father says Krishna is a thief. He stole butter when he was little, so now he steals jewels."

Little Madhu, who was sitting on the fence, jumped down so fast he nearly fell.

"That's a lie!" he shouted. "He was with me! He milks Kamala! He tells me stories! He is not a thief!"

The big boy shrugged. "How do you know? Were you there in the forest?"

Madhu opened his mouth, and shut it, and his eyes filled with tears, because he did not have an answer. He ran all the way to the cowshed and hid in the hay beside Kamala and cried into her warm white side.

That was where Krishna found him, later, when the stars were out.

"Madhu?"

The little boy sat up, sniffing. "They're saying bad things about you, Swami. Everybody. I told them it wasn't true. But they asked if I was there, and I wasn't, and I couldn't say anything." He wiped his nose on his arm. "Why don't you tell them? You're Krishna. If you tell them, they'll have to believe you."

Krishna sat down in the hay beside him. For a long while he did not say anything. He looked very tired. Kamala turned her head and nuzzled his shoulder, and he rested his hand on her neck.

"Madhu," he said at last, "I have fought demons bigger than this cowshed. I once danced on the hoods of a giant serpent in the Yamuna. None of that was as hard as this." He gave a small, sad smile. "A demon, you can fight. A rumour has no body. You cannot hit it. You cannot catch it. It just goes from mouth to ear to mouth, and grows."

"So the curse is true? Because of the moon in the milk?"

"The curse doesn't care if I did it or not," said Krishna. "It only cares that I am blamed. That is what false blame is."

Madhu thought about this very seriously. "Then what will you do?"

Krishna picked up a piece of straw and turned it in his fingers.

"There are two ways to answer when someone blames you for something you didn't do," he said. "The first way is to shout. You say, 'I didn't do it! I didn't do it!' again and again, louder and louder. Some people believe you. Some don't. And the ones who don't will always wonder."

"And the second way?"

"The second way," said Krishna, "is to find out what really happened." He sat up straighter, and something bright came back into his eyes. "Think, Madhu. I did not take Prasena. So something else did. A man on a horse doesn't vanish into the air. A jewel that shines like the sun doesn't simply disappear. It went somewhere. Somebody, or something, has it. If I find out who, and bring the jewel back, I won't need to say a single word. The truth will speak for me."

"Like a detective!" said Madhu. He did not know the word detective, of course; that word would not be invented for thousands of years. What he actually said was, "Like a tracker who follows a lost calf!" But he meant exactly the same thing.

"Exactly like that," said Krishna. "And who is the best tracker of lost calves in all of Dwaraka?"

Madhu pointed at himself.

Krishna laughed. "The second best, then. After you."

That night in the palace, Rukmini, Krishna's queen, found him standing at the window, looking at the sea. The moon lay on the water in a long silver path.

"You aren't sleeping," she said.

"I was thinking about the old story," said Krishna. "The one grandmothers tell on Chavithi. About a little elephant-faced god who ate too much, and a moon who laughed, and a mother who cursed. I always thought it was a story for children."

"And now?"

"Now I think," said Krishna, "stories for children are usually the truest ones."

The next morning, in front of King Ugrasena and the whole Yadava assembly, Krishna stood up.

"You have all heard what is being said about me," he said, and the hall went so quiet you could hear the pigeons on the roof. "I will not argue. I will not swear. I am going into the forest to find out what happened to Prasena, and I will bring back the Syamantaka Mani. Anyone who wants to see the truth with their own eyes is welcome to come with me."

There was a shuffle, and a murmur. Then one by one, people stepped forward. A few loyal friends. A few elders. And, to Krishna's quiet amusement, several of the very people who had whispered loudest in the market, who wanted to see for themselves.

They saddled horses and filled water skins. And as the little party rode out through the city gates, a small figure with a cowherd's stick came running down the road after them, shouting.

"Swami! Wait! You need a tracker!"

Krishna reined in his horse, looked down at Madhu, panting in the dust, and held out his hand. The boy grabbed it, and Krishna swung him up onto the saddle in front of him.

They rode along the coast road, and turned inland, into the deep green forest, where the trees closed overhead and the light turned dim.

Krishna rode at the front, and Madhu leaned forward over the horse's neck, and both of them watched the ground.