Krishna and Me

Today is one of my most favorite Hindu Indian festivals - Krishna Jayanthi as we tam brams call it or Krishna Janmashtami as the rest of India calls it. I am not sure why this is one of my favorite festivals especially when the other festivals are equally amazing. Maybe it is the food quotient attached to this one.......think about it: seedais, murukus, thatais, milk sweets, fruits basically just about everything. But then every tam bram festival is always comes on top where food is concerned. God! all this talk about food makes me want to schedule a day off and go home right now and start eating. Oh! How I digress!

So why is this special to me?? Cos Krishna is my most favorite God! OK..I know there plenty of you ladies out there and a few guys who might claim the same thing, but for me my relationship with Krishna has been a life long thing. If you are interested about the how and why's read on else you can just skip this post right now!

• I befriended Krishna when I was very young! As soon as I started babbling words as a baby. My parents always fondly tell me stories of how I would stay awake (after they though I was asleep)at night speaking to the red night lamp in the room babbling the words "aalithana la lal la lal"!!! Nobody could figure out this meant...almost 2.5 decades later a few years ago my mom who was listening to a discourse somewhere understood what I had meant while saying those words..it was code for aaillai krishna which actually means baby Krishna on a leaf!

• I got my first toy a little plastic doll (which I still have btw) right at the time I started to talk... I named him Krishna! Nobody knew why and neither did I. "Krishna papa" stayed with me all the time for a few years. Teddy bears and other toys came and went but "Krishna papa" stayed and enjoys his place on the shelf till date! Maybe one day (hopefully) my kids can play with him.

• When we lived in B'lore my mom had this awesome statue of Lord Krishna playing the flute in the living room. She had drooled over this magnificent piece of art and purchased it for its beauty and craftsmanship. One day as she was working elsewhere in the house, I am presuming it was the kitchen, she heard a loud crashing noise. Since it happened to come from the living room she rushed there only to find the magnificent statue of Krishna on the ground broken in several pieces and yours truly standing / kneeling right beside the "holy" mess! Obviously she was flooded with anger as an expensive piece of art was gone and asked me why I broke the statue. The reason lil ole me gave was "I was playing with Krishna and he fell down"!! Needless to say I received a lot of wacks and mom never ever purchased delicate objects of beauty again - at least not until I grew up!

• During the summer holidays after completing my 5th grade I was introduced to paints and brushes! It took me a year or two to get really friendly with them paints and brushes and then boom! There I was painting pictures of Krishna one after the other. Some of them hang in my house, some were gifted to others and some are still trying to find a spot on the wall where they can proudly rest....This phase continued despite classes, exams, college projects and more..

I don't know what happened with me since I started working! Seems that the more and more I flooded myself with ambitions to snag a corner office with a view somewhere (which I am sad to report that I have not yet done) and travel the world, I immersed myself in a web of meetings, deliverables, late nights with no sleep and bad food and what not. I didn't even realise as Krishna slowly slipped away from my heart and moved far, far away. He was around but we were not as close as before... On this day as Indians across the world celebrate his birthday I hope to make an effort once more to woo him back to where he belongs which is close to my heart. The first step was realisation and I think I did that pretty well...

Happy Krishna Jayanthi to all....What your most favorite Krishna experience? I would love to know...