Part 11 of 12 · 15 minEvery Year, On His Birthday

In a narrow lane behind the market of Dwaraka lived a little girl named Chitra, who was seven years old and who had decided, very firmly, that Krishna was not dead.

Everyone else thought he was. For three days now, since the searchers had come riding home from the forest with their heads hanging low, the whole golden city had been wrapped in grief. The temple bells were silent. The flower sellers had not opened their stalls. The musicians who played every evening on the palace steps had wrapped their veenas in cloth and put them away. Even the sea seemed quieter, as if the waves were tiptoeing up the beach so as not to disturb anyone.

"He went into the cave of a monster," Chitra's grandfather said, sitting on the doorstep with his head in his hands. "Twelve days they waited. Twelve days they heard roaring under the hill, and then silence. Nobody comes out of a place like that."

"Krishna does," said Chitra.

"Child, you don't understand."

"I do understand," said Chitra. "He lifted a whole mountain with one finger. He danced on the heads of a snake. A cave is only a hole." She folded her arms. "And he didn't steal that stupid jewel either. Everybody said he did, and now everybody is crying. That isn't fair."

Her grandfather opened his mouth to scold her, and then shut it again. Because the truth was, he had been one of the people in the market who had whispered, "Well, you never know with Krishna. He did steal butter as a boy." And now the words sat in his stomach like a cold stone.

That afternoon Chitra climbed up onto the city wall near the eastern gate, where she was absolutely not allowed to go, and sat there with her chin on her knees, watching the forest road.

The sun moved across the sky. A cart went by. A goat went by. A long time went by.

And then, far away, where the road came out of the trees, something flashed.

It was not the flash of a spear or a helmet. It was brighter than that, warmer, like a piece of the sun had come loose and was walking along the road. Chitra shaded her eyes. Beneath the flash there was a figure, a dark, slim man in yellow silk torn in a dozen places, with a peacock feather still stuck bravely in his hair. Beside him walked a tall young woman with long black braids. And the flash, the blazing light, was coming from something he held high in his hand.

Chitra stood up on the wall and screamed so loudly that the guards dropped their spears.

"HE'S BACK! KRISHNA'S BACK! HE'S GOT THE JEWEL!"

Now, you might think a city takes a long time to wake up from grief. Dwaraka took about as long as it takes to drop a cup. The watchmen blew their conch shells, bhoooom, bhoooom. The eastern gates swung open with a great groan. People ran out of houses with flour on their hands and half-tied turbans. The flower sellers threw open their stalls and simply began flinging marigolds into the air. The musicians unwrapped their veenas. Somebody started beating a drum, dhum-dhum-dhum, and somebody else started crying, and somebody else started laughing, and most people did all three.

Rukmini came running down the palace steps without her sandals. Devaki and Vasudeva, Krishna's mother and father, pushed through the crowd and held their son so tightly that the Syamantaka jewel was squashed between them and lit up all three faces like a lamp.

"You're hurt," Devaki kept saying, touching his bruises. "Look at you. You're all scratches."

"I wrestled a bear, Amma," said Krishna. "A very large, very old, very kind bear. It was the best fight of my life."

Chitra had wriggled her way to the front of the crowd, and Krishna saw her there, a small dusty girl bouncing on her toes. He winked at her. She nearly fainted with joy.

But Krishna did not go to his rooms to rest. He did not go to bathe, though he badly needed a bath after twenty-eight days in a bear's cave. He turned to the Yadava elders and said quietly, "Please call the royal assembly. And please send for Satrajit."

The great hall of King Ugrasena filled faster than it ever had. Every seat was taken, then every step, then every window ledge. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders. Chitra squeezed in between two fat merchants and could see perfectly.

At the front sat old King Ugrasena on his throne. In the middle of the hall stood Krishna, still dusty, with Jambavati beside him. And then the doors opened and Satrajit walked in.

When he saw who was standing there, and what was glowing in Krishna's hand, all the colour drained from his face. He looked like a man who had just stepped on a snake.

The hall went so silent that you could hear the sea.

Krishna did not shout. He did not point at Satrajit and say, "You called me a thief!" He simply began to speak, calmly, as if he were telling a story to children at bedtime.

"Satrajit's brother Prasena rode into the forest wearing the Syamantaka," he said. "A day's ride from here, we found his horse lying dead in a clearing. A little way on, we found Prasena. Around him were the tracks of a lion."

He turned to the crowd. "Who was with me?"

A potter stood up, twisting his hands. "I was, Maharaja. I saw the tracks. Great round paw prints, as big as my plate."

"We followed those tracks," said Krishna, "and we found the lion, crushed, as if something enormous had squeezed it. And around the lion there were new tracks. The tracks of a bear."

A young soldier stood up. "I saw them too. Long claws. Flat feet. I've never seen a bear so big."

"The tracks led to a cave," said Krishna. "I went in alone."

An old washerwoman stood up. "And we waited outside, Maharaja. Twelve days we waited. We heard the fighting under the ground. The rocks shook. On the twelfth day we thought you were dead." Her voice cracked. "I'm sorry I thought so badly of you, before. I'm sorry I listened to the talk."

One by one, the people who had followed Krishna into the forest stood up and said what they had seen with their own eyes. And Krishna told the rest: the torchlit hall under the hill, the baby playing with a jewel for a toy, the lullaby, "the lion killed Prasena, and Jambavan killed the lion", the twenty-eight days of fighting, and the moment the old bear king looked into his face and wept, "Rama. It's you."

Then Krishna walked across the hall and held out the Syamantaka Mani to Satrajit.

"Your brother was killed by a lion," he said gently. "The lion was killed by Jambavan. Here is your jewel."

Satrajit did not take it. He fell to his knees, right there on the polished floor, and put his face in his hands.

"I told the whole city you were a murderer," he said. "I told them you were a thief. And you walked into the dark and nearly died to bring back my jewel, and you have not said one angry word to me." His shoulders shook. "How can I ever undo what I have done?"

Children, here is a hard truth, and it is worth remembering. Once you have spread an unkind story about someone, you can never fully take it back. It is like pouring water on the ground. You can say sorry, and you should, but the water is already gone into the earth.

Satrajit could not undo it. But he tried, with his whole heart.

"Take the jewel," he begged. "It is yours. And I have one more treasure, more precious than any stone."

He turned and called his daughter.

Satyabhama walked into the hall with her chin held high. She was known all over Dwaraka for two things: she was very beautiful, and she was very, very fierce. It was whispered that when her father first started telling everyone Krishna was a thief, she had stamped her foot and said, "That is the silliest thing I have ever heard, Father, and you will be sorry for it." And she had not spoken to him properly for a week.

Now she looked at her kneeling father, and then at Krishna, and her eyes were shining.

"I told you so," she said to her father, but softly, and she helped him up.

Satrajit placed her hand in Krishna's. And Krishna, smiling, accepted Satyabhama as his bride. But the Syamantaka jewel he put back into Satrajit's hands and closed his fingers around it.

"It was the sun's gift to you," he said. "Keep it. Only let its gold feed the hungry of this kingdom."

The hall exploded with cheering. Chitra jumped up and down between the two merchants shouting "I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!" until one of them lifted her onto his shoulders so she could shout even louder.

So, in a single day, Krishna came back from the dead, cleared his name, and gained two brides. Dwaraka celebrated for a whole week, with music every night and sweets on every doorstep.

But on the last night of the celebrations, when the lamps were burning low and the city was finally asleep, Krishna sat alone on the palace terrace, looking out at the dark sea.

He could not sleep.

Out of the stars came a sound, twang, twang, the sweet silvery sound of a veena. And down a staircase of moonlight came walking a sage with a long beard, a veena over his shoulder and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. It was Narada, the wandering messenger of the gods, who travels everywhere and knows everybody's business.

"Narayana, Narayana," he sang, and sat down beside Krishna with a happy sigh. "You look very gloomy for a man who has just won a jewel, a wrestling match and two wives."

"I am thinking," said Krishna, "about how close I came to being remembered as a thief forever."

"Ah," said Narada. "The moon in the milk pot."

"You know about that?"

"I know about everything. It is my one talent." Narada plucked a string. "You looked at the moon on Chavithi. Parvati's curse fell on you, and you were blamed."

"Yes. And I am Krishna," said Krishna. "I had the strength to wrestle Jambavan. I had friends who followed me into the forest and spoke up for me. I had a shining jewel to hold up at the end. But Narada, think of the ordinary people. A farmer walks home on Chavithi night and glances at the sky. A washerwoman carries water under the moon. A little girl climbs a wall to look at the stars." He thought of Chitra. "The curse will fall on them too. They will be blamed for things they never did. And they will have no cave to walk into, no bear king to fight, and no jewel to show. What are they supposed to do?"

Narada was quiet for a moment, which for Narada is a very long time.

"Do you remember," he said, "what Parvati told the gods, all those ages ago, after the wives of the seven sages were wronged? She said there would be a way out of the curse. She said it would not be found by the gods. It would be found by someone who fell under the curse himself." He smiled. "Krishna, I think she was talking about you."

Krishna turned and looked at him. And slowly, the gloom went out of his face, and the old mischievous light came back into his eyes.

"The curse falls on people who dishonour Vinayaka's day," he said, thinking aloud, "by staring at the moon that laughed at him. So what if, instead, everyone honours his day? What if, every single year, on his birthday, every home remembers him?"

"Go on," said Narada, delighted.

"And what if they tell his story? All of it. The whole thing, from Gajasura's wish to my own foolishness with the milk pot. If they hear how even Krishna was blamed and how the truth came out, the curse will lose its teeth."

"Narayana, Narayana," said Narada happily. "Now that is a festival."

The next morning, before the whole royal assembly of Dwaraka, Sri Krishna announced the vratam, the sacred promise, that we still keep. And if you close your eyes, you can see exactly how he described it, because it is exactly how your own house looks on that day.

"On Vinayaka Chavithi," said Krishna, "wake up early, before the sun. Sweep the house and wash the doorstep, and draw a muggu, a rangoli, in rice flour at the door, so Vinayaka knows he is welcome.

"Take fresh clay from the riverbank, the soft wet earth, and shape him with your own hands, just as his mother once shaped him from turmeric paste. Give him his big ears and his curly trunk and his round tummy. Don't worry if he comes out a little crooked. He came out a little round the first time too, and his mother loved him just the same.

"Build him a little pandal, a canopy, of banana stems and mango leaves, and hang it with fruits, corn cobs and wood apples, so that he sits in a little green palace.

"Then, children, go on a hunt." Here Krishna smiled at the little ones in the hall. "Vinayaka must be worshipped with twenty-one different kinds of leaves, the ekavimsati patri. Run through the gardens and the fields and the roadside bushes and find them all. And don't forget the one he loves best: garika, the thin green durva grass that grows everywhere. It is the smallest gift in the world, and it is his favourite.

"Meanwhile, in the kitchen, let the kudumulu steam. Let the undrallu roll. Let there be modakas and laddus, vadapappu and panakam, bananas and coconut and jaggery, everything he ate on his very first birthday. But this time," said Krishna, "please, let him eat slowly."

The hall laughed.

"Then sit together, the whole family, in front of him. Grandmothers, parents, children, even the cat. And read his story aloud. Tell of Gajasura's wish and the dancing bull. Tell of the boy made of turmeric who guarded his mother's door, and the head that was promised. Tell of the mouse and the umbrella, and the race around the worlds, and the night the moon laughed. Tell of the sages' wives, who were blamed for nothing. And tell of the Syamantaka and the bear king, and how even I, Krishna, was blamed."

Krishna held up a handful of rice mixed with turmeric, the golden grains called akshatas.

"And at the end of the story," he said, "let everyone take a few of these grains and place them on their own heads, as Vinayaka's blessing. Whoever does this on Chavithi, whoever hears his story with a true heart, even if by accident they see the moon that night, the false blame will not stick to them."

"But we still shouldn't look at the moon on purpose, should we?" called out a small voice from a window ledge. It was Chitra.

"No," said Krishna, laughing. "On Chavithi night, keep your eyes down, little one. I learned that the hard way."

"And then what?" asked Chitra.

"And then," said Krishna, "after a day, or three, or nine, when you have honoured him well, carry him out of the house with drums and dancing. Take him through the streets, singing his name. And lower him gently into the river, or the lake, or the sea. The clay goes back into the water and the earth it came from. He goes home. And next year, he will come back to you, new again."

The people of Dwaraka bowed down. And then, because it was a very good idea, and because everybody loves a festival where you are allowed to eat kudumulu until your tummy is round, they did it. That year, and the next year, and every year after that, until the whole land of Bharata was doing it, and then the whole wide world.

That is why, to this day, grandmothers still tell children not to look at the moon on Chavithi night. That is why the story is read aloud in every home. That is why there is always a happy scramble at the end, when everyone reaches for a few grains of turmeric rice to press into their hair. And that is why the streets fill with drums and colours when the clay Vinayakas go home to the water.

As for Chitra, she grew up to make the finest clay Vinayakas in all of Dwaraka, with the roundest tummies and the curliest trunks.

And as for Krishna, he never looked at the moon on Chavithi again. Every year, on that day, he sat on the floor with his family, a leaf plate of kudumulu on his knees, and listened to the story. And when they came to the part about the milk pot, he always laughed the loudest.

But we are not quite finished. Because now that you know all his stories, there is one more thing to do. We should open Vinayaka's treasure chest, and see who he really is.