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| Tales of Wheels and Devotion |
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The remembrance
of Krishna's pastimes often rides on wheels.
This poem
retells a few events that depict Krishna on a chariot while enacting His
pastimes with His devotees.
In the first
scene is the bullock cart that carried small Gopal, Nanda Pran, from
Mahavan to Vrindavan in order to protect Him from the demon's attacks. It
ends with the meeting in Kurukshetra because of the desire of the Gopis to
move the chariot with Krishna back to Vraja.
I hope the reader
will also cherish the taste of Krishna's names that are mostly associated with Nanda
Baba in order to keep Him in our hearts as the cowherd of the gopis and gopas, even
though some pastimes are in His royal disguise.
BRS 1.2.168 Seeing the festivals (verse 87) from Bhavisyottara :
"The dog-eaters and other low persons who joyfully see Kesava on His chariot all become associates of the Lord."
Tales
of Wheels and Devotion
With many wheels clattering
and stirring up clouds of dust,
the long line of bullock
carts
meandered like a river
in the light of dusk.
Amidst this clamor of
bugles, bells, bellowing
and colored flags flapping,
songs rose up
from the caravan
leaving Mahavan
out of love for Nanda Pran.
On another day
when the light was the same,
a gilded chariot of royal fame,
clattered,
sinister and cruel
in a flurry of dust,
taking Nanda Gopal away
so that love melted the stones (1)
with tears of despair.
Winged by the whisper
of the heart,
the chariot of Nanda Kumar
flew to a place afar,
committed to His promise
to reciprocate His devotee's love,
He plucked the precious Lotus,
leaving the proud princes
aghast. (2)
The rattle of wheels and swords
again saw Nanda Kishor
on a chariot.
In a din of shouts and blows,
where the red blood dyed
the dust, the sky and all eyes,
for love this time
He led the ride.
His curls, sticky and ashen
with sweat and dust,
and His skin smeared with
blood,
He hurled the wheel as He
rushed (3)
toward a chivalrous heart,
astounded with awe
by the wondrous sight
of his lotus red eyed foe.
When His heart wept,
heavy with a debt of love,
Nanda Dulal unsteadily
boarded His chariot,
pierced the night,
rode at the speed
of light,
and came to the forest grove,
to the petal bed of His Beloved,
where, out of intense love
She was on the verge of
death. (4)
The royal chariot
has come back,
without that snake of torment, (5)
instead, Nandu's friend
is walking ahead
of Nanda Suta,
adorned with gems;
He is no more a cowherd
in this land (6)
where the Moon sets
but no lotuses bloom.
Let's turn these wheels
and move
them towards Vraja,
but, once amongst those kunds
this cruel chariot,
memento of separation
and tears,
will have to leave
to remove our fear
of seeing Nanda-Lal carried
away,
and the Vanadevis languishing
in love and in madness once again.
1) Bhakti Ratnakara p.144 " What can I say? Only those who saw the scene can understand. All the
damsels of Vraja came running to see Krishna with tears flowing like rivers
from their eyes. Seeing that scene even wood and stone melted.
2)
Krishna kidnaps Rukmini
3)
Krishna act as Arjuna's charioteer during the battle. In a Chivalrous rasa with
His devotee, apparently playing the part of His enemy, Krishna hurled a wheel
to Bhismadeva.
4) "Three logs of wood" story retold
by Srimad Gour Govinda Maharja as the first Ratha Yatra. Krishna inebriated by his feelings for Radha,
mounts the chariot to fly to Vraja. In
the same way Lord Jagannath in Puri is carried to the chariot by the pujaris
who shake Him as if drunk to remember this pastime. (see also in blog
"Canticle of Union")
5) Garga Samhita 5.15.10 "At what
inauspicious moment did his mother, in order to give pain to the loving
devotees, give birth to Akrura? She did it as Kadru, in order to randomly kill
people here and there, gave birth to the species of snakes." Purport
[...] Vicious humans may also behave like cruel snakes and since he (Akrura)
mercilessly took Krsna away from them, the gopis considered Akrura to be among
such horrible creatures whose birth must have been timed a the most
inauspicious moment.
6)
Kurukshetra. -- When
Nanda Suta and the gopis met in Kurukshetra they were emaciated so much so that
their rings had become bangles around their wrists, their hair were uncombed
and their dresses untied, so Krishna understood the intensity of their pains of
separation. He started a sort of long soliloquy
in the attempt to justify what happened that He did not returned. He spoke
about yoga, about the will of the
Supreme, about providence, but it all sounded very confused. The gopis will respond with a single sloka in
the Bhagavatam which ends the chapter.
SB
10.82.48 :""O Supreme Lord, O directly manifest Supersoul, O crest
jewel of teachers of philosophical knowledge!
Understanding that we have great attachment to house, wealth and family,
You previously had Uddhava instruct us and now personally You are purifying our
hearts with knowledge to destroy that ignorance. Thus we understand that Your pure love for us
is free from any motivation other than assuring our liberation. But how can we
unintelligent cowherd women fix that knowledge in our hearts? ..[..]" translation
by Srila Visvanath Chakravarti Thakur.
This same
sloka was chant by Caitanya Mahaprabhu in front of the chariot of Lord
Jagannath.
This is
the secret of our Ista-deva, the Lord of the Sankirtan Movement, the Lord of the
Universe, fully reciprocating His devotees' love, shows the highest ecstasies
in a meeting that follows a long separation and He comes to everyone to
exchange that love on the wheels of His chariot.
SBB III 7.146 Purport " [...]...the
aborigine women lacked the assets of knowledge, good birth, good behavior and
devotion to God. They were ignorant of their own eternal identities as spirit
souls, and because they had never come close enough to Nanda Maharaja's village
to see Krsna with their own eyes, they were also ignorant of Krsna's
all-attractive beauty. None the less, in
the forest, the aborigine women of Vraja accidentally came in contact with grass
and leaves smeared with kunkuma from
the bodies of the gopis [...] even
though indirect, it infused them with sublime devotion for Krishna
...[...]. Having had some contact with
the gopis, the aborigine women of Vraja all attained a perfection similar to
theirs, if not in this life then in the next."
