When they tell my tale, they will say I was a

baby when I showed Yashoda the cosmos

inside my mouth. They will talk of how I

sucked the very life out of a demoness

through her breast. They will call it the

vanquishing of Putana. You will also hear of

how I lifted a hill on my little finger as a boy

tending my cows.

These are just stories, but they will turn into

truths, as stories do when birthed from the

pen of raconteurs with literary flair and skill.

But they were always just stories.

Govardhan hill was lifted and elevated about

seven feet above the earth, not by me and my

divine strength but by a group of men lead

by an engineer with crazy ideas. I enjoyed

hanging out with him in my boyhood,

fascinated by his ideas and inventions. He

was from a distant land, towards the west of

the five rivers and the Hindukush mountains.

I called him Haish.

Haish was from a tiny country called Greece.

An island nation full of gods much like ours.

Haish was on a journey of self-discovery

when he found me.

I was standing beneath the kadamba tree

playing my flute which I called bansuri, lost

in the music I had created. It was the one

time; I could disengage from everything

around me: my solace, my pride. I loved the

melancholic notes that hinted at secrets and

promises. It reminded you of the cool

breezes on hot summer nights and the

warmth of the sun on your back in winter

afternoons. I often felt it was not me who

was playing the flute but rather the flute

playing me. When my lips touched the cool

shaft of bamboo, I felt like this was the only

reality. I created pain, joy, rage, love,

subliminal in its rawness and simplicity and I

did it with a piece of bamboo and my breath.

Haish heard my music before he saw me and

was pulled in by the force of the bansuri's

refrains. He sat down near me, closed his

eyes, and let the notes pass over him.

"It brought me peace" he told me much

later. When I stopped playing and saw this

young man seated on the grassy knoll, I

knew this was no ordinary mortal. We started

talking, and the awareness of our true self

that both of us held in our hearts lead us to

realize the divinity in the other quickly.

He was Hephaestus, the Greek, I was

Krishna, of the Hindus, and so much more,

for I was a form of Vishnu, a form of his

Zeus. As far as divinity goes, both of us felt

in tune with each other. Hephaestus was

brilliant, bright, and starved as I am of

equality in friendship, the three months spent

in the company of Hephaestus were some of

the best in my existence on Earth.

One particularly humid summer evening, I

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was chatting with Haish about the monsoon

rains and the lightning strikes that come with

them. "You know what, we could lift that hill

in the west and raise it high enough to make

a shelter for the people who get caught in the

rain," Haish ventured. All he had been doing

the last two weeks was listening to me

playing the flute and chatting with Amsu, a

friend of mine Haish seemed to have

developed a fondness for, probably because

of Amsu's keen intellect and quiet

demeanour. Although Haish was an inventor,

he liked having his mind occupied by

technology, physics, masonry, and forging.

The idea stuck, and we decided to give it a

go- lift Govardhan the human way. Haish

built an underground hoisting system that

could bear the weight of a hill the size of

Govardhan. Metallic sheets were placed

underneath to lift them. It took Haish a good

two weeks to set it up. I knew men would not

be able to replicate it even a thousand

centuries later. We decided to give it a try

when it would be raining.

The next time one of the crazy downpours

started to occur when it seems as if the

heavens had opened up, wanting to submerge

the whole earth in a deluge, I rounded up the

villagers and took them to Govardhan. Haish

pulled the lever that lifted Govardhan. It

worked. Haish did not make mistakes. He

didn't like to be seen either. He was too

conscious of his looks. I, ever the playful

showman, decided to stand with my feet

crossed and little finger raised, looking as if I

was holding up Govardhan. The image just

stuck, I guess.

Haish had been travelling the world because

he was running away from home. He was

married to the most beautiful woman in

Greece, a goddess, but she fell in love with

his cousin, a high-ranking general in the

Greek army, a god of war. Hurt, he did what

a lot of men do, exposed their adultery, and

then ran to find peace.

A couple of months after the Govardhan

Raising feat, something Haish would not let

me tell anyone the reality about, Haish said

to me that he needed to go back home. The

three months in Vrindavan had made him

calmer. He felt he was in a better place and

could think more clearly than when he had

left Greece.

I let my dear friend go back. Haish was

Hephaestus. He had a responsibility as a

divine being of his island, and I needed to

spend time with Radha.

I had been neglecting Radha these past three

months. She said I was enamoured by the

Greek, going so far as even my flute was

now playing a foreign tune. She hated the

new music, which of course, Haish loved. I

had changed some of the notes to suit his

ears.

Haish left, and I went back to Radha and my

friends. The music emanating from my flute

reverted to the familiar style loved by the

people I was supposed to love. Thus I played

on, my tryst with Hephaestus relegated to the

back of my mind, a story that would not be

told.

But I never used that lever built by Haish to

lift Govardhan again. It must have rusted

over the years and broken down in disuse.