Finally, she spotted their chubby shapes moving between the legs of the cows, the udders often higher than their little curly-haired heads. She cried out in indignation and went running to catch them. Just then, one of them tugged particularly hard at one aging cow’s tail, causing it considerable distress. The aging half-blind cow took great offense at the prank and not realizing that it was Haridev himself who had committed the offense, she reared back and kicked out hard. Both bows tumbled over and over on the ground, but their falls were softened by their landing in a large patch of something soft and cushiony. When Rohini came across them, they were both lying together and laughing merrily, covered from head to toe in fresh cow dung.
Another time, they both caught hold of a cow’s tail together and wanted to pull it. Each insisted he was the first to grab it so he should be the one to pull it. In their baby talk, they both argued fiercely, neither willing to relinquish hold of the poor cow’s appendage. Finally, in pain from the constant pulling, the cow began to run away. Still both brothers refused to let go.
At the sound of Rohini’s and Yashoda’s voices, all the women in Vraj came out of their houses and saw Balarama and Krishna being dragged by a cow who appeared to be trying to win a race as their mothers ran behind them, yelling to them to let go of the tail!
Their pranks grew bolder. Once a snake slithered into the compound and was spotted at once by Krishna. He trotted off to examine the new arrival. Rohini saw Krishna from where she sat but could not see the snake due to a depression in the ground. She assumed he was merely out for a walk and continued chafing the wheat. Balarama grew curious and left his play to follow his brother.
Krishna squatted down and watched the snake slithering along the wet drain nallah behind the house. He grew fascinated by the movement and began to want to imitate it. He crawled into the nallah on his belly and began slithering after the snake, imitating it perfectly. Naturally, once Balarama saw Krishna, he wanted to do the same.
Rohini got up at once when she couldn’t see both boys. She came running over and looked down into the nallah to see both Krishna and Balarama slithering on their bellies after a snake. For the life of her, she couldn’t tell if they were trying to catch the snake or merely imitate it.
Swords and weapons were a special problem. Having seen them being used by men in training, both boys were always eager to imitate their older counterparts. Once, some veterans passing through left their swords leaning against the side of the house and went inside to drink some buttermilk. Krishna and Balarama saw the swords lying unattended and took their chance.
The sound of metal clashing drew everyone out of doors. They came out in a rush to see both little boys holding swords twice as tall as themselves, swinging the blades with mad abandon, each blow threatening to lop off one’s head, or the other’s arm or chop off a leg...
Fire, thorns, birds, jumping from heights...nothing daunted the boys. They experimented with everything if left unattended for even a moment. It was as if they felt compelled to explore every possible aspect of mortality first-hand and to experience it for themselves.
They grew up quickly, starting to play with boys much older than their ages, joining in their games and quickly beating them all. The older boys took this in good spirits, for everyone loved and admired Nanda-Maharaja and loved Krishna just as much. But it was Krishna who would soon tire of the predictability of winning each time and desire new challenges.
He would release all the cows from the enclosure at the wrong time, then climb on the fence and sit there giggling as the cows went lowing into the fields, eating more than their share at the wrong time of day, while all the gopas and gopis ran about shouting and blaming one another for leaving the fence open. It took them a while to realize that little Krishna was capable of opening the heavy fence on his own. In fact, Krishna always put Balarama to pushing the heavy fence door open while he shooed the cows out and twisted their tails to make them move faster. So when he was asked if he had done this prank, he would quite innocently and truthfully, ‘But I didn’t open the fence! It was Balarama! He did it!’ And of course everyone would turn to Balrama and Rohini would gather up her son and scold him. What was more, Balarama always took these scoldings and the resultant blame without a whisper of complaint. He would do anything for Krishna.
But the biggest mischief began when Krishna developed a fondness for dahi. He had always loved it and had begun demanding it of Yashoda even when he was of an age when children usually drank only milk. But now that he was old enough to go and take it for himself, he began indulging his taste to absurd limits.
Every night, Yashoda set a large vessel of dahi to set overnight, meant to feed the entire family the next day. With 44 people in their family, that was a very large quantity of dahi.
At one meal, Krishna finished his share of dahi and wanted more. He asked Yashoda who fetched him another serving. Krishna ate this up as well and still wanted more. Yashoda fetched him yet another serving. It was her practise to keep servings small so that no food was ever wasted. But Krishna finished the third helping and still craved more. Yashoda was involved in a very entertaining discussion with her sisters and friends and out of sheer distraction she told Krishna, ‘You mean to eat the whole store of dahi from the kitchen?’ Having said this, she went back to the discussion.
Now, Krishna was less concerned with the admonition than with the revelation that there was a greater store of dahi kept in the kitchen. Intrigued, he got to his feet and pattered away barefoot through the large house. He rarely went to the kitchen because he rarely needed to go there: Yashoda and Rohini always made sure the boys were well fed and fed on time.
This part of the house was empty. Everyone was gathered in the living rooms, talking and enjoying the evening hours of leisure after a hard day’s work.
Krishna pattered alone into the kitchen. He went about looking into various vessels, seeking out the dahi. He searched every last vessel without finding it. Disappointed, he thought that Yashoda-maiya had only said that to make him keep quiet whereas the truth was that the dahi was finished.
Upset by this, he started to run back to his mother to tug at her garment and complain to her loudly. Just then, he glimpsed a door ajar and realized there was another smaller chamber behind the main kitchen.
He pushed open the door with the fearless boldness of a boy who knows this is his house and he can do anything he pleases here. He entered a long narrow chamber which was the pantry and larder area where vegetables and other foodstuffs were stored.
There were a few vessels here as well and he searched them at once. The second one turned out to be a whole vessel filled with freshly set dahi. It was the next day’s batch and due to the coolness of the weather, it had set already. There was more whey on the top than Krishna was used to in his dahi, but it was still dahi!
He dipped his fingers into it, scooping out a little, and tasted it. He had to slurp to keep it from spilling from his mouth. Yummy! He smacked his lips. This was even better than the dahi he had just had after the meal. It was freshly set and he liked the thin layer of cream on the top. The dahi Yashoda had served him had come from the bottom of today’s vessel so it had been totally without cream.
He thought he would have a few more mouthfuls then stop. There was such a big vessel of it, Maatr would hardly notice a little missing from one side.
After a few mouthfuls, he still craved more. It was so creamy, so rich, so tasty!
He had been scooping out the top layer to get as much cream as possible. This meant that he had to keep going around the side of the vessel. He realized he had eaten almost a complete circle around the edge of the vessel. It looked like a wheel drawn on the surface of the dahi. Yashoda-maiya would certainly notice the missing dahi in a trice. He had never done anything like this before, he had no way of knowing how she might react.
Perhaps if I eat the cream layer on the inside of the circle it will all look the same again and Maatr won’t notice.
&nbs
p; He started scooping the creamy layer from the inside.
Time passed.
A member of the household who passed through the kitchen on his way to the backyard heard the odd sound of Krishna slurping dahi from his fingers but could not figure out what the sound meant or where it was coming from. He stood by the kitchen doorway for several moments, turning his head this way then that, and finally concluded that it was some kind of rodent digging his way under the house.
‘Those rabbits are back again,’ he told Nanda when he returned to the main house, ‘I heard one of them trying to burrow through the ground. He sounded like he was gobbling up the mud!’
Nanda thought it was odd that rabbits should be digging in this season but said he would take a look around the next day. Everyone went back to their pastimes.
Krishna finished eating and looked down at the vessel of dahi. He had eaten the full layer of cream from the top now, all the way across. But in one or two places he had scooped his hand too deep, and the level of dahi in those plaes was noticably lower than in the rest of the vessel. Yashoda would certainly notice that!
He decided that if he ate around the whole vessel, taking just enough to level out the surface, it would all look pristine again and Yashoda would not be able to tell the difference. ‘It will look exactly like it was when freshly set,’ he told himself, grinning.
He set to his task with gusto.
Much later, he sat looking down at the vessel of dahi. Apparently, he had managed to finish the entire thing. All the dahi was gone! He had even wiped the bottom clean with his fingers, then licked every last drop off his fingers.
Now what?
Yashoda would surely notice an empty vessel. Perhaps she might think she forgot to set the dahi tonight?
No. Maatr never forgot such things, not ever.
What to do then?
A thought came to him.
Rohini-maiya lived in the cottage next door. Perhaps she had her own store of dahi too? After all, Balarama ate much more than he did and he loved dahi almost as much.
He decided to go check.
Rohini’s house was open too, as were all houses in Gokul-dham. There were no thieves here because nobody would steal from their fellow Vrishnis. That was true for all of Vraj-bhoomi. But there was no vessel of dahi here. Krishna had no way of knowing that Rohini took her dahi from Yashoda’s supply for she was a member of the family too, as was Balarama.
All he could think of was the empty vessel of dahi and what Yashoda-maiya would say once she found it empty.
He decided to try Sawariya-mausi’s house next door. The lady in question was at his house, talking with his mother and her friends and sisters right now, so her house was likely to be empty.
It was empty.
And there was a vessel of dahi in the storage area, freshly set. What was more, there were other vessels as well. When Krishna checked them out of curiosity he was surprised to see that they were also filled with freshly set dahi. Seven, eight...ten full vessels of dahi! He didn’t know that Sawariya-mausi sold the dahi she made at the market each day. He childishly assumed that it was all for her and her family. ‘How much could they possibly eat? One vessel? Two maybe? Three at most? They don’t need so much dahi. I can take one and replace Yashoda-maiya’s vessel and Sawariya-mausi won’t even notice.
Even if Sawariya-mausi did notice, she was hardly likely to blame Krishna for it.
He picked up the vessel. The weight itself was not a problem but the size was an issue. It was a strain for him to pick it up and carry it.
Then he thought of something.
‘What if this dahi doesn’t taste as delicious as Yashoda-maiya’s dahi? Surely she will wonder why then.’
Besides, he thought, once he took this vessel back home and put it in his mother’s pantry, it would be from this same vessel that he would get fed tomorrow as well. So it mattered greatly to him how the dahi tasted.
He dipped one tiny finger into the corner of the surface just to taste the dahi.
He sucked the finger.
A look of ecstasy came over his face.
‘It isn’t as delicious, it’s better! Yummier!’
He tasted a little more, just to be sure.
Then another scoop, to savor that rich creamy taste again.
Then he saw that he had spoiled one corner of the surface cream, so he decided to eat around the rim to even it out.
Time passed.
Krishna sat in his neighbour’s kitchen, eating her dahi.
He lost track of time.
Before he knew it, he was looking down at an empty vessel. Again.
‘No matter,’ he told himself. ‘There’s plenty more here.’
Speaking of which...there was so much here that he could leave several for Sawariya-mausi’s family, take one home to replace Yashoda-maiya’s dahi and still have a vessel or three spare.
He decided there would be no harm in eating a bit more. Just the cream off the top of another vessel.
And so it went.
Sometime later, Yashoda realized that Krishna had been gone a long time. She asked Rohini if she had seen him. Rohini frowned. ‘He was with you when I last saw him, eating something.’ Balarama lay in her lap, fast asleep. Krishna had made him push a boulder up hill several times today, just to see whether it rolled faster when it was at different points on the hilltop. He was tired from all that pushing and had fallen asleep immediately after his evening meal.
Yashoda thought back and recalled fetching two or three servings of dahi for Krishna. ‘And he wanted more,’ she said aloud.
It occurred to her to look in the kitchen, just to be sure.
She looked around but found nobody there.
Then she remembered that she always kept the dahi vessel in the cooler pantry area and looked there.
She saw the empty dahi vessel and knew at once what had happened.
‘Look at that,’ she told Rohini and the other ladies who had followed her out of concern. ‘He’s gone and eaten the whole store of dahi!’
‘But where is he?’ Rohini asked.
Yashoda thought for a moment, her forehead creasing, her fist resting on her hip. That rascal Krishna, eating up all the dahi. She would give him a piece of her mind once she found him. ‘He must be hiding somewhere,’ she said, ‘afraid that I will scold him.’
So they began searching the house, looking in all the usual places Krishna hid. It was a big house and it took a while, even with so many people searching at once, because they were all talking at once and kept going over the same places again and again. Finally they were done and Yashoda was certain that Krishna was nowhere in the house.
‘Maybe he’s in the cowsheds,’ she said. He had hidden there once when he had toppled her brother-in-law’s uks cart off the side of a cliff, sending it crashing into the ravine below. I just wanted to see if the cart could fly, he had said by way of explanation when he was finally found.
But he was not in the cowsheds either.
By the time they finished searching there, it was very late at night. There were a lot of cowsheds and a lot of crevices where a little boy could easily hide.
Everyone regrouped, most smelling of cow shit and cow urine, a few smelling of fresh milk where they had been squirted while bending down to search under the cow bellies. Krishna had been known to hide in such places.
They began to worry.
By this time, Balarama had been woken up by the commotion.
While everyone was debating where else to look and what else to do, he pushed at his mother’s arms, asking to be put down, and when Rohini set him down, he instantly began walking away in a certain direction.
Rohini caught hold of Yashoda’s arm and pointed at Balarama.
He was walking purposefully up the road.
Rohini and Yashoda followed him without saying a word. The rest came behind them, also trying to keep silent. When some tried to ask where they were going, the others shushed them loudly. The shushing w
as louder than the voices.
Finally, Balarama came to a house only two doors away from Yashoda and Nanda’s residence. He stopped and looked up at the house as if sensing something. Then he ran into the open door and went in.
Yashoda and Rohini went in. ‘This is Sawariya’s house,’ she said, recognizing it.
They went through the house, searching for Balarama.
They found him in the pantry off the kitchen.
He was standing and looking down at Krishna.
Krishna, who was sitting in the center of ten large vessels that had apparently been filled with dahi not long ago.
KRISHNA CORIOLIS#3: Flute of Vrindavan Page 14