One day,
the bigger children, including His brother Balarama, rushed
out to eat the fruits of a tree
growing in the compound. Krishna loved
those fruits, so He toddled after
them even though nobody had thought
of inviting Him. They shooed Him
off as being too small to climb trees.
Still, He insisted on accompanying
them, so they agreed to give Him the
task of picking up the fruits as
they fell.
"Now mind
you, don't eat a single one," they warned, knowing His
capacity for food. "Your job is
only to collect the fruits and we'll come
and divide them equally."
"All right,"
He said meekly.
The big
boys, including Balarama, scrambled up and started dropping
bunches of lovely, ripe, purple
fruits to the ground. Krishna started picking
them up and gobbling them as fast
He could. He crammed His
mouth, and His little hands were
going up and down like pistons from the
ground to His mouth. After some
time, one of the boys chanced to look
down and discovered what was going
on. "Hey! Stop that nonsense at
once!" he shouted. "Look at Krishna,"
he called to the others. "He's eating
the fruit instead of collecting
it!"
"Stop
it! Stop!" all of them shouted from the top of the tree. All the
little heads popped out from among
the branches, shouting angrily at
Krishna, who seemed supremely unconscious
of the whole affair and
continued to cram His mouth. The
purply fluid was oozing down the corner
of His mouth and in His hurry to
eat as much as He could, He had not
even cleaned the fruit. Quite a
bit of mud also found its way into His
mouth. The boys came sliding down
and shook Him hard. "What do you
think you're doing?" they shouted.
Krishna
did not speak a word for the simple reason that His mouth
was packed with fruit.
"All right,
we'll show you," they cried and ran inside searching for His
mother.
"0 Mother!"
they cried. "Your son is eating mud!"
Yashoda
came running to find out what the commotion was all about.
"Your
son is eating mud!" they cried, pointing accusingly at Krishna.
"Have
you been eating mud?" she repeated sternly.
Krishna
shook His curly head and started sniffing loudly as a prelude
to crying. He dared not open His
mouth yet, for He hadn't quite finished
swallowing the fruit.
"Ask Him
to open His mouth, Mother!" Balarama urged. Krishna
glared at him as if He couldn't
believe that His brother would stoop to
such a low trick.
"Yes,
ask Him to open His mouth," the rest of the boys chorused.
"Open
your mouth, Krishna," Yashoda said sternly.
Krishna
turned His limpid gaze on her. "Have you forgotten what
happened when you looked into my
mouth the last time?" was the
unspoken question.
She had
indeed forgotten, or probably misunderstood. If so, the time
was propitious for another lesson.
Or perhaps, He thought, if she wanted
to see mud, she could have her
fill of it!
And the
Lord who had become a human child out of sport, without
any loss of His divine powers,
now opened His rosebud mouth. She
bent forward to peer more closely
and lo! she felt herself to be whirling
in space, lost in time, for inside
the baby mouth was seen the whole universe
of moving and unmoving creation,
the earth and its mountains
and oceans, the moon and the stars,
and all the planets and regions. She
was wonderstruck to see the land
of Vraja and the village of Gokula,
herself standing there with the
child Krishna beside her with a wide-open
mouth, and within that mouth another
universe, and so on and on and on.
"0 God!" she
thought. "Am I going mad or is this a dream or the
magic wrought by this strange child
of mine? Krishnaaa " she cried,
clinging to His name like a drowning
person to a lifeline. "Krishnaaa"
It was a despairing cry, for she
felt her head whirling. Immediately, He
shut His mouth, and she got back
her equilibrium. In a trice, she had
almost forgotten what she had seen.
"Why have you been eating....." She
stopped in mid-sentence. What a
fool she was! This child carried the
whole universe within Himself and
she was worrying about a few grains
of sand! "Krishna! 0 Krishna!"
she whispered, snatching up her boy in
her arms. "Who are You? Who are
You? Who are You?" she whispered,
nuzzling His baby curls with her
lips. Before the astonished gaze of a
dozen small boys, she carried her
darling inside, caressing Him and
murmuring endearments to Him. The
boys gazed after her in disappointment.
You really couldn't tell with adults,
they decided. There was
no saying how they would react.
They had fully expected to enjoy the
spectacle of Krishna howling for
mercy from an irate mother and look
at her! Hugging and kissing Him!
He whom the
Vedantins (followers of the Vedas) speak of as Brahman,
whom the yogis consider the Atman
( individual soul), and whom
devotees call Bhagavan,
that Supreme One was considered by Yashoda
to be her own son.
