Krishna, Mothers and the Simple Life

Look around you today. Everyone is running. Students are running towards marks. Young men and women are running towards promotions, salaries, designations and LinkedIn connections. There is nothing wrong with ambition. It is good. It is necessary. But somewhere in all this running, we have quietly dropped something precious, something we did not even notice we had lost. We dropped the simple idea that a full life includes more than a full inbox. That a rich life is not just a financially rich life. That the greatest moments a human being can experience are not in a boardroom, rather they are in a kitchen, a courtyard, a cradle. And this is exactly what a very old, very beautiful story has been trying to tell us for thousands of years.

The Bhagwat Purana, particularly the tenth chapter is the story of Krishna's childhood. And what a childhood it is. It is not a tale of gods and thunder and battles in the sky. It is something far more powerful. It is the story of a little boy who steals butter, who makes his mother chase him around the house, who cries convincingly when caught and who manages to charm every single person in the village of Vrindavan. Krishna is God. And yet, the writers chose to show him as a child crawling, crying, laughing, being scolded, making friends with cowherd boys, teasing the girls at the river, breaking pots of curd. Why would the writers of the Bhagwat spend so many pages on a toddler stealing butter? Because they understood something profound: the sacred is not far away. The sacred is right here, in the ordinary, in the messy, in the sweet and exhausting business of raising a child.

Picture the scene. Little Krishna has stolen butter again. Yashoda, his mother catches him, her hands still floury from the kitchen. She tries to look stern. But Krishna looks up at her with those wide, innocent eyes, his face smeared with butter and says, "Ma, it wasn't me." And Yashoda bursts out laughing, even as she pretends to scold. Her heart is so full, so ridiculously full, that she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She ties him to a grinding stone so he won't run away again. And even that moment her tying him, him pretending to sulk is one of the most celebrated, most beloved moments in all of Indian literature. It is not a miracle. It is not a battle. It is just a mother and her child and a rope and a grinding stone and love so large it has no name.

Sanskrit word "Vatsalya" which means the love a mother has for her child is considered one of the highest forms of love. Not romantic love. Not devotion to God in a distant, fearful way. But this warm, laughing, exhausted, overflowing love of a parent for a small, wild, wonderful child. Yashoda did not build an empire. She did not win awards. She did not have a career or a title. And yet, the Bhagwat tells us she experienced something so rare and so beautiful that even the gods envied it. She got to be Krishna's mother. She got to call God by his name, feed him with her own hands, wipe his face, hear his first words, watch him take his first steps. What greater joy can a human heart hold?

And the neighbours of Vrindavan, they are not just background characters in this story. When Krishna does something mischievous, he doesn't just involve his family. He involves the whole community. The Gopis, the women of the village come to Yashoda again and again, complaining about what this child has done. He broke our pot of curd. He let the calves loose. He frightened our children with his pranks. But watch how they complain. Their eyes are laughing. Their voices carry no real anger. Because this child has made their days interesting. He has made their world bright. A village with a child like Krishna in it is a village that is alive every home, every courtyard, every well becomes a stage for his small, glorious dramas. This is community. This is what a neighbourhood looks like when children are at its centre. Noisy, sometimes messy, but deeply, warmly alive.

This is something we are quietly losing in our cities today. Apartments where no one knows their neighbour. Floors and floors of people who have never spoken to each other. Streets where children do not play. Where there is no noise, no mess, no butter-stealing, no pretend-scolding. The Bhagwat is not just a moral text, it is a work of extraordinary beauty. The language is musical. The images are poetry, little Krishna's curly hair, his anklets ringing as he runs, the blue of his skin like a monsoon cloud, the butter dripping from his fingers. When young people encounter this beauty, something opens in them. They don't just understand the story intellectually. They feel it. And it is this feeling, this aesthetic joy, that quietly changes how they see life.

When today's youth encounter these stories not as religion, but as literature, as aesthetics, as human experience something shifts inside them. Because these stories are not asking you to be less ambitious. They are asking you to also be more human. They plant a seed: that one day, I too want this. Not instead of my career. Alongside it. They teach young men that being a father is not a footnote in a man's story rather it is one of his greatest chapters. They teach young women that choosing to be a mother, if they so choose, is not a retreat from greatness. It is greatness of a different, quieter, more enduring kind. Build your career. Work hard, dream big, earn well. But also in the quiet moments let these old stories speak to you. Let Yashoda's laughter reach you. And let yourself want that too 😊 the mess, the noise, the love, the ordinary sacred miracle of a small hand holding yours. Because a life that has both, the career and the cradle, is not a compromise. It is a masterpiece.