Roberto Calasso - Ka

Nothing was ever more cheerful than Kṛṣṇa’s childhood. He was the ragged, cheeky kid everybody knew in the clay huts of Gokula, the fields around Mathurā, the courtyards of the rich — the kid whose endless mischief they always forgave. Wherever he went, he would always be carrying a cowherd’s goad. His first, perhaps only, rule was that nothing is so sweet as sweets that are stolen. Wherever he passed by, cream would disappear, He began his adventures by splashing in all the muddy puddles around the village. The experience would remain in his mind as the measure of all happiness. A band of little boys followed him everywhere — and he hid among them. Apart from these companions in adventure, the only creatures he ever had dealings with were of the other sex. The mothers would look up from their embroidery, craning their necks, and laugh to see the boys returning smothered in dust, and feel suddenly young again themselves, ready to leap off like antelopes along the Yamunā. And then the enchanting gopīs , the cow girls. Like children in another school you could climb a wall and signal to. There was a never-ending game between them: teasing, stifled laughter, races, practical jokes, gifts. And then the cows, those slow, solemn creatures who were the coinage of the countryside, and everywhere in circulation.

Trying to keep a straight face Yaśodā, Kṛṣṇa’s mother, would often listen to the complaints of other mothers who had become the butt of the urchin band’s adventures. It was a comedy everybody felt bound to act out. Soon they forgot about it and talked about something else. Only once was Yaśodā alarmed. Some little boys had been spying for her: “Kṛṣṇa is grubbing around and eating filth like a pig.” Yaśodā rushed out and found the boy on all fours. She yelled and scolded but then was shocked to see a terrifying flash light up his eyes. “Mother, it’s all lies. If you don’t believe me, look in my mouth.” “Open up,” said Yaśodā.

The mother watched those small lips, whose every crack she knew so well, come apart. Yaśodā bent down to study her son’s palate and found a vast, starry vault that sucked her in. Already Yaśodā was traveling, flying. Where the back of his throat should have been rose Mount Meru, strewn with endless forests. To one side were islands, which perhaps were continents, and lakes, which perhaps were oceans. Yaśodā breathed with a new calm, as if she had walked into the open air for the first time in her son’s mouth. The vision that most enchanted her was the wheel of the Zodiac: it girded the world obliquely, like a many-colored sash. But Yaśodā went further. She saw the mind’s back-and-forth, its lunar inconstancy, its monkey leaps from branch to branch of the universe. She saw the three threads all substances are made of twist together in balls, which produced other balls. And behind it all she saw the village of Gokula, recognized its narrow streets, the patterns of its stonework, the carts, the springs, the wilting flowers. Until finally she saw herself, in a street, looking into a little boy’s mouth.

For years the lives of the two bands, the little cowherd boys and the gopīs , ran parallel. They were like a single body split into two patrols, divided into two wings, moving on opposite sides of a low hill, shouting insults and gesturing defiantly at each other from the two banks of a stream. But it was hard to tell who was speaking and who was answering. They were a twin flock, milling in the air. There wasn’t a ripple in the one that didn’t find its dimple in the other.

But the gopīs were growing up too. One icy dawn in the first month of winter, they met to celebrate a rite in honor of the goddess Kātyāyanī. They were proud and very aware of doing something new. This time the band of boys would not be on the other bank of the Yamunā. They were callow, probably asleep. The gopīs felt more adult. Only they, they thought, could go through this ceremony, Only they could gain intimacy with the Goddess.

It had barely begun to grow light when they reached the Yamunā and took off all their clothes on the bank. They pretended it was a normal thing to do, but they were trembling with excitement on seeing each other’s naked bodies for the first time. They walked off, apparently deep in thought, leaving their robes, all embroidered at the hems, in soft little piles behind. Then they went down into the water till it was halfway up their thighs, which were quickly turning to columns of ice.

They had to make a statue of the Goddess out of sand. They worked like skilled craftsmen. They adorned it with garlands, poured sandalwood oil over it, lit little flames around it, laid it on a bed of leaves, fruit, and rice. They worked of one accord and in silence, and as they did so each one was praying in the silence of her mind, frightened almost by the words she was hearing there, words which for the first time were hers and only hers. They would never have wanted to say those words to any of their companions. They blushed at the mere thought that such a thing might happen. At the very same time, in the mind of each gopī , the same words were being pronounced: “O Kātyāyanī, sovereign of the mind and of deceptions, let Kṛṣṇa, son of the herdsman Nanda, become my husband. I bow down before you.” Not one of them was more eloquent, not one spoke a word more. They had but one desire, but one name to name it. Each felt at that moment that she was the protagonist of a story none of the others could possibly know. Each felt separate from the whole for the first time, and inebriated with being so, ready to endure that corrosive, melting sensation she now discovered in the pit of her stomach.

But they soon passed from praying to playing, in the water. And all at once these lovesick girls went back to being children who tussle together and laugh. Kṛṣṇa slipped out of their minds. But Kṛṣṇa was watching them. Perched on the forked branch of a huge nīpa tree that bent over the river, the bright eyes of his companions darting among the leaves all around, Kṛṣṇa watched the gopīs at play in the water as he raised the clothes they had left behind to his lips, breathing in their perfume one after the other. For the first time he saw the gopīs ’ breasts, and found they were like the domed temples of elephants. For the first time he saw the curve of their hips, which he had long glimpsed in the hidden movements beneath their clothes. For the first time he saw those bellies tight as drums converging on that dripping hair that appeared and disappeared amid the waters of the Yamunā. For the first time he saw the agile thighs, thrashing through the waves as they played. One by one he raised their robes to his mouth, whispering the name of the gopī they belonged to. Each time it seemed Kṛṣṇa had found the ultimate name, the name that cancels out all others, the name he would go on repeating forever. But then immediately afterward, he was pronouncing a new name, in a slightly different whisper. This went on for a long time, until one by one, after each had been brushed by Kṛṣṇa’s lips, the gopīs ’ clothes passed from the right fork to the left of the branch of the nīpa tree.

All of a sudden one of the gopīs lost interest in their game. She looked toward the bank, turned her head this way and that. The little heaps of clothes were gone. She screamed. She didn’t need to explain anything. The others turned their heads and joined in. It was a solid, penetrating scream, raised in a freezing, empty dawn. Then, wary and sidelong, the gopīs slowly lifted their eyes to the leaves of the nīpa tree. And then they heard Kṛṣṇa’s voice. It was the voice of the tormentor who played tricks on all of them together, and the voice of the lover sending a coded message to each in her separateness from the others. Kṛṣṇa said: “Girls, don’t be afraid, your clothes are all here. You of the slender waists, come one by one to get them back.” He was finding it hard to keep a straight face: the gopīs had all sunk down into the waters of the river, last veil for their nudity, so that all you could see was arched brows over bright eyes staring at the tree. Only their hair floated free, like tendrils of aquatic plants. But the longer the gopīs stayed down in the water, the more an icy cold clutched at their throats. Then they spoke: “Kṛṣṇa, this is the meanest trick you’ve ever played. You are our beloved, but you also know the rules of law and custom. If you don’t give us our clothes back, we will have to tell your father.” Kṛṣṇa answered in what was now unequivocally a lover’s voice: “If you really are my slaves and want nothing better than to obey me, then you will come up here to get your clothes back, you of the lovely hips.” So one by one, shivering with cold, and for the first time making that gesture of covering their dripping bellies with their hands, the gopīs came out of the water and approached Kṛṣṇa. For a moment each imagined that Kṛṣṇa would take her by the hand and run off, with her alone. But Kṛṣṇa did nothing more than give each girl her clothes back, taking care that their fingers didn’t meet.