Roberto Calasso - Ka

Then there were other questions, less lofty perhaps, but just as thorny. If the sixteen thousand gopīs were all married, what went on in their homes at night while they were dancing the rāsalīlā with Kṛṣṇa? How was it that those sixteen thousand husbands never complained — perhaps never even noticed their wives’ absence? Would one have to subscribe to the theory according to which sixteen thousand gopī simulacra stayed calm and quiet in their legitimate beds while the bodies of the real gopīs wrapped themselves like parasites around Kṛṣṇa.

The controversy was violent in the extreme, and over those months of debate at least six centuries of war were echoed. In the end the disciples who upheld svakīyā conceded defeat. They underwrote a document in which they accepted as correct the doctrine they had always abhorred. But what were the decisive arguments that sealed the triumphant sovereignty of the illegitimate? parakīyā is that which brings the metaphysical element in love to the point of incandescence. And what is that element? Separation. Never is the “flavor” ( rasa ) of “separation” ( viraha ) so intense as in illegitimate passion. Furthermore: whatever is parakīyā is denied the permanence of possession. It is a state in which one can only occasionally be possessed. This corresponds to the essence of every relationship with Kṛṣṇa. Finally: the woman who abandons herself to a love that is parakīyā risks more than other women. To violate the rules of conjugal order is to deny this world’s bonds and abandon oneself to what calls to us from beyond the world. Such love does not seek to bear fruit, and it never will. Whatever seeks to bear fruit will consume itself in that fruit. While that which disregards every fruit is inexhaustible. This is pure preman , liquid, diffuse “love,” unsatisfied by the obsessive arrow of kāma , “desire,” but absorbing it into itself and keeping it circulating there, the way Kṛṣṇa’s seed continues to circulate in his body without ever bursting forth. He who follows kāma wants nothing better than for the arrow to strike its one target, pleasure. But he who follows a love that is parakīyā must always take his pleasure mingled with fear, indeed with a twofold fear: the fear of separation and the fear of punishment. Both weigh on him, constantly, surrounding every sensual delight with a livid and thrilling aura. Yet it is only that twofold fear which gains us entry to the “sweetness” ( mādhurya ) which is Kṛṣṇa’s ultimate nature, the trait revealed when a lover’s being has, little by little and ever so slowly, been stripped of all its clothes. She who reaches that point will feel Kṛṣṇa’s hand grip her wrist, as though to help her place her foot on the stones of a stream before launching herself into him on the other bank. Thus did the theologians and ascetics set off on their ways, once more having accepted a doctrine whose very name boasted a flagrant and glorious contradiction: the parakīyādharma , the “law of the illegitimate.”

“Heart thief and butter thief,” Kṛṣṇa was called. Or again, “thief of the heart’s butter.” But when his favorite, Rādhā, doubts him and demands to hear every one of his names, she doubts each of them, for they could each refer to someone else, except one, that is “butter thief.” It is the only epithet that identifies Kṛṣṇa beyond all doubt. Even when he was exploring Yaśodā’s kitchen on all fours, the little boy was drawn to those terra-cotta jars and their inebriating, creamy contents. Soon Yaśodā decided to keep the jars hanging in the air so that Kṛṣṇa couldn’t get them. But nothing was beyond his reach. He climbed on beams and windows. Sometimes Yaśodā would catch him with his hands in the butter. “I’m chasing off the ants,” Kṛṣṇa would say at once. Butter was the element through which he communicated with other creatures, with all women, with his mother, with Rādhā, with the gopīs .

Kṛṣṇa means “Black,” “Obscure.” The first creature the word was used to refer to was the antelope, who was also the first among creatures. It was in the black pelt of a skinned antelope that the loins of the sacrificer were wrapped. And sacrifice is the perennial second act, the act that extracts an essence from the first, an articulation that then allows us, through the third act — ordinary life — to move on to every other.

As a lover Kṛṣṇa did not look black but blue, purplish, or sometimes even lighter: mauve. Often his skin resembled the big bluish stain on Śiva’s neck where the ocean’s poison had concentrated, the stain his partners loved to lick. When he fought and cut off heads, Kṛṣṇs might go back to being black again. Then a yellow fabric would arch up from behind his shoulders and, like the whites of his eyes, gleam out against the dark.

One night when the moon was full, in the month of Kārttika, the gods got together in a circle to watch the dance of the perfect lovers, Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā. This time Śiva sang an accompaniment in a voice that was rarely heard. Gazing at the two twining bodies, the brilliant colors mingling together, the gods fell into a gentle swoon. When they awoke, the lovers had melted to become a spring that flowed silently into the Gangā.

Kṛṣṇa left the forest and meadows of Vṛndāvana for the city of Dvārakā, where he was united in wedlock to eight queens. The gopīs now roamed in silence. Accustomed to the emotion of stolen love, when they were alone they would sometimes say the words “you thief” over and over, but without getting any response. Life went on as though Kṛṣṇa had never been with them. Separation, emptiness, absence: this was the new emotion, and the only one.

Shut away in his palace, his eight worthy, pompous queens orbiting around him with implacable precision, Kṛṣṇa was getting bored. Occasional relief came in the form of conversations with the old Nārada. Born from the neck of Brahmā, condemned by Brahmā to wauder forever without respite, Nārada had been through so many stories, seen so many places. Old now and cunning, curious, part pander, part court counselor, a great musician, a great teller of tales, deceitful, voyeur. flatterer, intelligent. malevolent — who better than he to distract one from melancholy? thought Kṛṣṇa. They spent the nights playing chess and talking. Then Nārada would play the vīṇā , as masterfully as ever. Kṛṣṇa enjoyed teasing him too. Once he said: “Now tell me about the life when you were a worm and tried to avoid the chariot of that king.” “Of course, we are always attached to our bodies, even when we’re worms…,” said Nārada. He smiled, but somewhat nervously. The stories Kṛṣṇa liked most were the ones about the two lives when Nārada had been transformed into a woman. “Even though you have lived as a woman and borne dozens of children, before climbing over their corpses that time to pick a mango, you never understood anything about women…” “You might be right,” said Nārada. “For example, I don’t understand how you manage with all these queens…” “But these are not women ,” said Kṛṣṇa, suddenly gloomy, and he went back to staring at the chessboard.

One evening Nārada realized that Kṛṣṇa was shivering, his eyes glazed. “What is the matter, my Lord?” he asked. “I’ve got a fever,” said Kṛṣṇa. The next day. Kṛṣṇa didn’t get out of bed. “He’s delirious,” whispered the serving girls. Days went by, and the fever was as fierce as ever. Nārada sat alone in his rooms, already thinking of setting off on his travels again, but worried. A doctor knocked on the door. “Lord Kṛṣṇa is still delirious,” he said. “He has but one wish. He says he will only get better if someone brings him the dust stuck to the feet of certain women. We were wondering if the wise Nārada, who knows the world better than anyone else, might be able to help,” the doctor finished, embarrassed. “Of course,” said Nārada. He had never refused an assignment that whetted his curiosity. And he was curious about everything. “I’ll do what I can,” he added.