They say the heavens opened the night I was

born. The rain fell in sheets, a downpour of

unforeseen proportions.

I was born at midnight, and my birth was to

turn into one of the most incredible tales of

human history. I was born in a dungeon to

the sister of a king. I was born in a hell hole,

like the child of a criminal, a convict. They

say the guards fell into the deepest of sleep

so I could be transported to safety. As a

child, I found the story of my birth

fascinating. It fed my sense of godhood.

Imagine hearing that the very cosmos itself

conspired to put more than a hundred guards

to sleep at the same time so that one of the

greatest extraditions known in human history

could be carried out. The story does not end

with me being whisked out of those

dungeons; it carries on, talking of how the

raging Yamuna River needed to be crossed

on a stormy night. A river my biological

father simply walked across, carrying me in

his arms, raised above his head even whilst

the waters of the Yamuna rose, dangerously

so, just to be able to touch my toe.

I come from a land whose greatest treasure is

the stories we have. These stories are born

from the wombs of the earth, the rivers that

flow across snow-clad mountains and nearly

barren peaks, fertile fields, barren lands, and

all sorts of terrains, some rich, verdant,

abundant, others stark, deserted, and plain.

The River Yamuna was a goddess who

craved the touch of her God. A god who

found merriment and amusement in being

born again and again in different forms,

different shapes. A god who laughed, even as

he was carried above a man's head,

struggling to cross a raging river, in the

darkest part of the night. A god who decided

that he might as well just dangle his feet a

little lower and dip them in the waters of the

Yamuna in case his so-called father might

drown. The details of how this entire

enterprise was brought about are not the

point. The point is the elements of nature

sensed the God in me and desperately tried to

take me in their embrace.

In some versions of the story, there is further

fantastical detail where a five-headed

mammoth snake, a king cobra, shelters me

with his hood spread out as my father carries

me to safety.

When I first heard these stories, I was still

young, and I let the storytellers weave their

intricate plots. These stories sounded better

than what I had heard from my biological

father when I met him in Mathura.

My father, Vasudeva, was a Vrishni prince

and the true heir of the throne of Mathura.

The Vrishni were an ancient race that

descended from Yayati. The Vrishni traced

their roots to Yadu and were known as the

Yadavas. Yadu was the son of King Yayati,

the son who refused to give up his youth for

his father and was cursed. But I digress; this

is not that story. This is the story of Vasudev

and Devaki. The already married Vasudev

agreed to marry the sister of a king, hoping

to better his place in the world of kings and

queens. Kansa was a usurper who had

defeated Vasudev's father, King Ugrasen,

and proclaimed himself the King of Mathura.

As the son of the defeated King, Vasudev

was left with few options but to look for

alliances that would help him regain his

position in society. King Kansa wanted his

sister to marry Vasudev so that he could keep

any possible future rebellions under control.

Vasudev was of the Yadava clan, a Vrishni

hero, and it would be imprudent and unwise

of Kans to have him killed. So, it made

political sense to make an alliance, and what

could be a stronger connection than a

marriage with his sister.

Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of mice

and men often go awry (a poet will say this

some thousand years later). A roadside

fortune teller with a grudge against the royal

clan decided to shout out just when the bride

and groom were about to be driven back to

the prince's palace by King Kansa himself, a

portent of things to come. The beauty of a

fortune well-told lies in the listener's state of

mind. King Kansa was an intelligent, logical

man on most days. But he had been drinking

in the evening, in the revelry of the marriage

party; he must have got carried away. He

drank a little too much in the night,

overheard a few courtiers talking about the

groom and how the prince had made this

marital alliance to be able to reclaim his

birthright to Mathura when the moment came

and what with one thought leading to

another, King Kansa found himself in an

irritable, annoyed mood which he tried to

hide from his sister Devaki, whom if truth be

told he was not fond of. She had grown up

into an overly religious young girl and had

developed a habit of moralizing over the

silliest things.

The fortune teller predicted a future where

the sister's eighth child would grow up to kill

King Kansa, and as these dark words hit his

ears, something inside the King snapped. He

ordered his guards to chain the newly

wedded pair and proclaimed all the unborn

children of his sister traitors to the royal

kingdom of Mathura.

And so, the words of a random fortune teller

altered the destiny of three people. My

mother, my father, and my uncle Kansa. I

speak myopically when I say three people. It

also affected Baba, Ma, Radha, and me and

maybe future generations to come. This was

not the first time such a thing occurred. We

hear tales of Lord Rama abandoning his wife

Sita on hearing a washerman cast doubt on

her virtue. Men have always been led astray

by idle chatter. It has happened before; it

happens now; it will happen again. We don't

learn. We don't change.

Baba was a friend of my father's from when

they were little boys, still unlettered in the

ways of our world. As they grew up, he

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became my biological father's go-to person.

Baba was the one person who my father

could trust implicitly. So, when I was

smuggled out from the dungeons of Kans's

palace, my father decided that he would take

me to Baba, knowing Baba would watch out

for me and love me like a son. But before all

that, how did they manage to do the

impossible.

When my biological parents, Prince Vasudev

and Princess Devaki, were taken prisoners

and sent to the Mathura Prison cells, the

guards were a little uncertain and unsure of

how exactly they were supposed to treat the

King's sister who had done no wrong. Prince

Vasudev was a Vrishni Hero, and quite a few

guards belonged to the Vrishni community.

They found it unnerving to treat the man they

looked up to like a petty criminal. However,

as the days went by, the erratic behaviour of

King Kans ensured that most of the guards

felt sympathetic towards Devaki and

Vasudev. Days turned into months, months

into years. Six times my mother conceived,

six times she miscarried. Vasudev, my

father, had married Lady Rohini before he

set his eyes on my mother, Devaki. Upon

hearing of her husband's imprisonment, Lady

Rohini had been begging King Kansa to

allow her to meet Vasudev. Her pleas fell on

deaf ears. Finally, however, the head of the

prison guards, who was a Vrishni decided to

help the devasted grieving woman. He asked

her to come an hour before midnight, and he

would ensure a meeting with Vasudev. It so

happened that the meeting that occurred

ended up being of a conjugal nature. The on-

duty guards had decided to take a smoke

break, maybe out of respect or boredom, we

do not know. But that one visit resulted in

the birth of my stepbrother nine months later.

My mother, Devaki, too conceived once

again. She remained despondent, depressed,

in a state of constant fear, sure that this time

too, she might not be blessed with a child.

Either way, she felt no happiness, no sense of

excitement that most mothers naturally feel

when they are to bring forth a new being into

this world. The headiness that comes from

having the power to create another entity was

lost to Devaki, who was living the worst

nightmare imaginable. If she had the baby, it

would be murdered without having

experienced the joys of life. She thought of

the baby as 'it'; she dared not even

contemplate gender. She couldn't bear to

think that far into the future.

I was born on the eighth night of the Krishna

Paksh in the month of Bhadrapada. Till I

arrived, no one was entirely sure whether I

would survive the birth or live to see the

morning. But my father Vasudev had many

loyal followers among the guards. They had

been plotting for many days, deliberating on

the best possible way to take the true heir to

the throne of Mathura to safety. The same

chief of guards who played such an

instrumental part in the birth of my brother

Balram helped the ex-Prince carry his son

out of the prison cell to his friend and aide,

Nand, the head of the Gopa tribe. Even as

Devki, the mother who carried me in her,

who was living in the prison cells of a palace

where her brother was King, lay on the

raised stone slab of the cell, a frail shell of

woman, exhausted from the pain of

childbirth, heartbroken at the thought of what

was to come she lay on the stone slab, drifted

into the oblivion of unconsciousness.

Questions were later asked of my father,

Vasudev, why he brought forth children who

may never have seen the world. What kind of

base, insensitivity compelled him to

procreate within those prison walls? A mere

expression of his manhood? What was the

great Vrishni hero Vasudev thinking? I

know. He was a warrior, a prince, craving

revenge. He wanted to be able to ensure that

if there were a chance the doom of King

Kans was to occur by the hands of his

progeny, Vasudev would ensure he had as

many as a man and a woman together could.

Vasudev believed in prophecies, omens,

Karma, as did most people in those times.

Most people still do. They may pretend to

believe in logic, in science, in what they can

see, hear, or touch, but there are moments

where they will stumble, falter, fall, and hold

on to whichever idea will help them pick

themselves up move on. This is the nature of

men and women, it has always been so, and

so it will always remain.

Kans had ordered the chief of guards to

inform him as soon as the impending birth

took place. However, the prison guards were

instructed by the chief to wait till morning if

the delivery of the child happened at night. It

would give the mother a few moments with

her newborn and who could dare grudge the

poor distraught soul that. And so, when I

decided to arrive late in the night, no guard

rushed to inform the King.

They should have. I was born in the fourth

term of the constellation of Rohini; the stars

foretold that I would be dangerous for my

maternal uncle. My uncle ended up dying by

my hand.

Vasudev, my father, carried me out of those

dungeons, the prison walls that had held my

parents captive, helped by the chief of

guards. The chief of guards had handed an

extract of Ashwagandha to the cook who

prepared the nightly kadha for on-duty

guards. The guards were supposed to take the

drink to ensure they stayed awake, alert, but

the Ashwagandha concoction put them in a

state of deep slumber.

Divinity does not work in mysterious ways.

It simply finds a being who can and will

help. The rest is just creativity. The creativity

of the narrators, the storytellers who will

make the tale fascinating by little

embellishments of words, with hyperboles.

Vasudev had decided that the safest place to

keep me would be with Baba, his friend in

Nandgaon. A few days earlier, a message

had already been sent through a man loyal to

the same chief of guards.

My father wanted to take me to Baba,

himself, maybe some deep-seated need to

have some more time with his son in his

arms did not allow him to hand me over to

some trusted soldier.

And so, on that dark, stormy night, my father

took me to Nandgaon, a village some forty-

five kilometres outside of Mathura. The

journey would take more than 9 hours by

foot, and Vasudev needed to be back before

morning, so he borrowed a horse and rode as

fast as he could until he reached the Yamuna.

However, the horse was terrified of entering

the raging river. So, my father Vasudev

decided to cross it himself on foot and

walked an hour more before he reached

where Baba was waiting for him with a

bundle that looked suspiciously like a

swaddled baby.

Babies were exchanged. Words were said.

Tears flowed. Sometimes, for the greater

good, sacrifices are made. One of the most

extraordinary sacrifices in human history

was made that night, near a tiny village to the

west of the Great Yamuna River. It was Baba

who made that sacrifice.