Ch. 4: Seven Days Beneath Govardhan

The storm did not stop. Indra in his anger would not let it stop. For one day and one night the rain fell, and then for another, and another. The clouds of destruction emptied themselves upon Vraja until it seemed that there could be no water left in all the heavens, and still they poured.

And for all those days, Krishna did not move.

He stood at the edge of the shelter with Govardhan raised upon his little finger, and he did not lower his hand, and he did not shift his feet. He did not eat. He did not drink. He did not sleep. Hunger did not trouble him, nor thirst, nor weariness. He simply stood, as steady as the earth itself, with the mountain held above his people, and he looked out at the storm with a calm face, as a boy might stand in a doorway watching the rain.

Under the hill, life went on. That was the strange and beautiful thing about those seven days, which the people of Vraja remembered all their lives.

At first they were too frightened and amazed to do anything but sit and stare. But by the second day the women had built hearths of stones and lit small fires with the dry wood they found among the roots, and the smell of cooking rose once more. The cows were milked, and the milk was boiled, and everyone was given a share. The children, who soon forgot to be afraid, began to run and play among the pillars of rock, and shout to hear the echoes, and chase the calves. Old men sat together and told stories. Somebody began to sing, and others joined in.

They sang about Krishna. How could they not? There he stood before their eyes, a child holding up a mountain. The gopis sang of his beauty and his mischief, of the butter he had stolen and the pots he had broken. The cowherd boys, his friends, crowded around him and told him jokes to make him laugh, and he laughed. And all of them, the whole of Vraja, gazed at him with love, for they could not stop looking at him. They felt neither hunger nor tiredness nor fear, so long as they could see his face.

Only sometimes, in the night, when the storm roared loudest, Yashoda would creep to the edge of the shelter and stand beside her son, and look up at his small hand under the weight of the mountain.

“Krishna,” she whispered once, “does it not hurt you? Are you not tired, my darling?”

“No, Mother,” he said, and smiled at her. “Go and sleep. I am holding it.”

And she went back, and lay down among the others, but she did not sleep. She lay and watched him through the night, as mothers do.

Nanda, too, sat and looked at his son for a long time. He remembered all the wonders he had seen, ever since the boy was born. He remembered the words of the old sage Garga, who had named the child and said that he would do great things beyond understanding. And Nanda bowed his head, and said nothing, for his heart was too full for words.

On the seventh day, Indra understood.

He had poured out the clouds of the ending of the world, and they had not been able to wet a single calf. He had sent the winds that topple mountains, and a child had lifted a mountain against them. He looked down at the small dark figure standing calm beneath the hill, and at last the pride that had blinded him fell away, and he saw who it was that stood there.

It was the Lord Vishnu himself, the eternal one, from whom Indra‘s own power came; who had come down to the earth and taken birth as a cowherd’s son for the protection of the good. And Indra, king of the gods, was ashamed.

He called back the clouds. At once the rain ceased. The wind fell silent. The great black clouds rolled away to the edges of the sky and were gone, and the sun came out, clear and gentle, upon a washed and dripping world.

Krishna called to the people beneath the hill.

“Come out now, all of you,” he said. “The wind has stopped and the rain is over. The rivers are going down. Bring out your cows, and your children, and all your things, and go home.”

So they came out, blinking in the sunlight, the cows first, then the carts and the women and the children and the old. They stood in the wet grass and looked up at the blue sky as though they had never seen it before. And when the last of them was out, Krishna, in the sight of all, lowered Govardhan gently back into its place, exactly where it had always stood, so that not a stone was out of order and not a tree had fallen.

Then the people of Vraja ran to him. The gopas embraced him, and the gopis sprinkled him with curds and rice and flowers, and the old women blessed him. Yashoda and Nanda took him in their arms and wept over him and kissed his face, and Balarama hugged him and laughed. In the heavens, the gods beat their drums and showered flowers down on him, and the singers of the sky sang his praises.

Then Indra came down to Krishna.

He came quietly, alone, in a lonely place apart from the village, riding on the white elephant Airavata. And when he saw Krishna standing there, he got down from the elephant, and he bowed until his crown touched the feet of the child, and with folded hands he spoke.

“Lord,” he said, “you are pure and eternal, beyond all anger and all pride. I am a fool. I thought I was the master of the world, and my pride made me forget you. I tried to destroy the people who are dear to you. Forgive me. You have broken my pride for my own good, as a father corrects his son. I take refuge in you.”

Krishna looked at him kindly.

“Indra,” he said, “I stopped your sacrifice only so that you would remember me. Those who are drunk with power forget me, and then they cannot see me standing before them. Go back now to your heaven, and do your duty there, and be free of pride.”

Then Surabhi, the wish-fulfilling cow, mother of all cows, came down from heaven with her children, and she bathed Krishna with her own milk. And Indra, at her request and at the command of the gods, bathed him with the waters of the heavenly Ganga poured from the trunk of Airavata, and so crowned him lord of the cows. From that day he was called Govinda, the protector of the cows. And Indra returned to heaven, humbled and at peace.

In Vraja, the cowherds rebuilt their roofs and mended their fences, and the grass grew green again on the slopes of Govardhan. And every year after that, when the rains were done, they made their offering to the hill and fed the Brahmins and the cows, and walked around Govardhan with garlands in their hair, singing.

They do so still. Every year, during the days of Diwali, the lamp-festival, people across India pile up food in a great heap like a hill, and offer it in love, and remember the seven days when a child held up a mountain like an umbrella and all of Vraja sheltered under it, together, safe in the rain.