Roberto Calasso - Ka

The defining characteristic of the curse, or so it seemed, was this: that it always worked. As one approaches the realm of the curse, one comes up against the invisible wall of certainty. But what is invulnerable certainty? The supremacy and pervasiveness of the mind. The curse is a purely mental act. And while one day this kind of act would be considered by definition ineffective, in those days it was precisely its mental character that made it seem efficacy itself. That is why the custodians of the curse are mostly brahmans, creatures of the mind. They owe their authority, their power, and even their name to their contact with brahman —and to nothing else. Brahman strikes more swiftly than the sword. So the brahman has no need of the sword. For a word articulated in his mind already conceals “a sharp-bladed razor.” More than their internal quarrels or their perpetual war with the Asuras, what most frightened the gods were certain encounters, above all with solitary old men who might very well appear to be the merest beggars or pilgrims, but would then all at once start darting flames from their eyes if something should irritate them. More terrifying and impenetrable than all the others was the brahman Durvāsas.

Durvāsas was a “portion,” aṃśa , a splinter, a glowing coal of Śiva. He too was a ṛṣi , but not a master of mind and gesture, like Yājñavalkya, or one of those who saw the hymns, like Viśvāmitra, or a weaver of plots and poetry, like Vyāsa. Durvāsas’s realm lay beyond the word, in the fury and excess that lie behind the many-colored curtain of the world of appearance. Curses and boons were the only ways he showed himself, as if in him the world were reduced to but two elements: prodigy and punishment. Everything was a source of offense for Durvāsas. There was nothing that might not spark his retaliation. Once he met Indra and offered his elephant, Airāvata, a garland of flowers. But the garland bothered the animal. Slowly, using his trunk while Indra looked on, Airāvata got the garland to slither to the ground. Immediately Śrī, the Splendor of the World, plunged into the ocean. Indra sensed that he was about to be stripped of his power. He looked around and saw nature desolate, buckling under some obscure burden. The garland rejected by the sluggish elephant had been consigned to Durvāsas directly from heaven. That garland was Śrī. Now the world would be bereft of splendor. It went back to being an arid wasteland. It was because of this petty incident that the gods had to undertake the toughest of all their labors, the enterprise that was supremely theirs: the churning of the ocean.

If Durvāsas showed himself at all, the meaning was clear enough: something ferocious and devastating was about to happen. In this emaciated brahman the gods were obliged to recognize spirit in its most remote and rugged form: flare, willfulness, devouring fire, at once out of control and inexhaustible. Every time history tightened in a noose, Durvāsas was there. Whether wayfarer or guest, the more casual his involvement, the greater the crisis it provoked. Thus when time was ripe for the massacre at Kuruksetra, Durvāsas arrived at the court of Kuntībhoja. Everybody served him eagerly, but they were faking. And Durvāsas never failed to recognize haste and ill will behind apparently abject deference. Only one little girl came to wait on his orders as if nothing in all the world could be more gratifying. But that wasn’t enough, because Durvāsas “more than anything else enjoyed putting people to the test.” One day, climbing out of his bath, Durvāsas found his boiled rice served in a scorching hot bowl. Without so much as a word, he raised impatient eyes to the little Kuntī. Then Kuntī got down on all fours, like a stool, to let Durvāsas put the bowl on her back. The muslin cloth she was wearing quickly burned through, exposing the skin. Kuntī suffered in silence. Durvāsas ate his rice, slowly.

At last the day came when Durvāsas was ready to set off again. He called Kuntī and said: “Child, listen to this mantra . One day, you will be able to use these words to evoke the gods. You will be able to touch them. Those whom others cannot even see will be your lovers, if you like.” As soon as Kuntī had learned the mantra , Durvāsas was gone, without saying good-bye. Years later, Yudhiṣṭhira, Bhīma, and Arjuna formed in Kuntī’s womb, each conceived from divine seed. In order for the twins Nakula and Sahadeva to be conceived, Kuntī revealed the Aśvins’ mantra to Mādrī, Pāṇḍu’s second wife.

Nārada had barely said good-bye, and already Kṛṣṇa was nostalgic for that old gossip who knew everything about everybody in every inch of the Island of the Jambū, and other worlds too, and went from one world to another as if they were different parts of the same town, cunning and curious, infatuated by detail, hardly interested in exercising his own power, so entertaining did he find it to watch others exercising theirs, intrigued above all by stories involving women. Stories without women, he maintained, got boring after a while, perhaps because he had once been a woman himself, not to mention a worm and a monkey, and this explained why, whatever the subject under discussion, he was never reduced to amazement and debated with great precision, as if delicately shaking the dust from some past experience or other.

Nārada had barely said good-bye when another brahman arrived at Kṛṣṇa’s palaces. He couldn’t have been more different from the one who had just left. Dressed in rags, he stepped gloomily forward on legs thin and long as a wading bird’s. His skin was burnished with a hint of dirty green. His lips moved in a dismal cadence. “Who will welcome the brahman Durvāsas to their home?” These were the only words anyone could make out. They were spoken with a malevolent chuckle. No one volunteered. They sensed the brahman’s unreasonable rage and didn’t want to provoke him. But Kṛṣṇa went to speak to him, offering a calm welcome, as if unaware of anything out of the ordinary. Meanwhile he was thinking: “The Guest again. This will be the hardest of all trials. No vow could be so strict. The Guest is the unknown. He takes precedence over all else, prevails over all else.” Kṛṣṇa at once called for Rukmiṇī, first among his wives. Rukmiṇī appeared in all her splendor and asked the guest to order everything that would give him pleasure. Durvāsas didn’t even seem to notice her. His eyes wandered among the ornaments, as if through a break of dry bush. When they offered him all kinds of delicious food, he ate with inhuman voracity. He haunted the palace, paying no attention to anybody, Kṛṣṇa not excepted. Every now and then a servant would find him laughing at nothing in a corner, making a sound like dried leaves. But others found him weeping copious tears.

When he lay on the ground, they mistook him for a heap of rags. He would go for days without eating. Kṛṣṇa had given the strictest orders: everybody must obey him in everything. Once, a thick smoke spread through the corridors. It was coming from Durvāsas’s room. When they got there, they found the brahman had set his bed alight and gone off. Some hours later, they caught sight of him again in the shadow of an alcove, deep in thought, as if he had never moved. No one asked him anything. On other days he would go into a room and hurl anything he could lay hands on against the walls. Finally there came the morning when he wanted to sit at Kṛṣṇa and Rukminī’s table. The conversation was desultory but apparently normal enough. Then he wanted rice cooked in milk. Immediately the servants offered him this common food, the pāyasa , that Kṛṣṇa had ordered to be kept ready along with countless others to satisfy Durvāsas’s every whim. The brahman then ordered Kṛṣṇa to undress. His tone was brusque. “Come here,” he said. Kṛṣṇa stood naked in front of him. Durvāsas ordered him to smear the white mush all over himself. Kṛṣṇa maintained an unworried expression. He was thinking of when, as a child, he used to climb on the kitchen stool to steal butter, and how some would always be left on his face. He avoided looking toward Rukminī. Kṛṣṇa’s body turned white, smeared all over.