It was the day of celebration of love. No I am not talking about the so called ‘Rose day’ or’ Valentine’ day here, I am talking about our very own’ Janmashtami’-the worship of the god of love - perhaps the only day we actually remember the poor (not by wealth but by fate)  lady who was our lord’s beloved, Radha! I was in the kitchen making tea in the presence of my young maid, a simple girl at the threshold of youth (when the only expected reason of heartburn is not acidity but heartbreak and sleepless nights are not because of stress but love and excitement). She was inquisitive and excited as it was the day of celebration, pooja, mela and recitation of various leelas of the Lord including rasleela and his so called love for his beloved... Radha.

I was plainly answering her questions in monotone focusing more on my tea and the time clock set in my mind when I heard.. “Didi Krishna loved Radha so much... so he never married anybody else throughout his life na?” I was stunned and at the same time speechless for a second because of the naïveté and innocence lurking behind the question. The ever inquisitive and innocent eyes fixed on my face expecting a yes - further strengthening her belief in love as popularly portrayed in our Bollywood movies.

I reluctantly and hesitantly said... “No, he loved Radha so much that he couldn't love anybody else ever in his life that much - even though he had 16008 wives!”

Yes I could almost imagine surprise mixed with shock filling her eyes, and in my mind I heard a thin crackling sound so much so that I had to check the cup I was holding in my hand! A bit exaggerated it sounds, but when you are talking about none other than our loved Lord Krishna and his’ leelas’, any exaggeration sounds acceptable and logical.

I told her yes, because of moral obligations and duties as a God and in order to protect his bhakts he had to marry again and again. Yet he never bothered or tried to marry Radha - Or did he? And why not? Now while answering her even I got curious and promised myself to seek for the answers in my free time which I eventually tried.

The first explanation that I found was that after leaving  Vrindavan Krishna defeated and killed Kansa and became the king of Mathura, from where he went on to establish Dwarka . On the other hand    Radha was forced to marry a Yadava boy and entered a household life. Ages after when Radha became free of house hold duties she went to see Krishna in his palace and acquired the position of maid in the house so that she could catch the glimpse of Krishna regularly. One day the pain of remaining physically close yet so distant became so unbearable that she decided to leave the palace.

Krishna got the clue of her leaving and caught her when she needed him, as she was feeling unwell. He asked her to demand a wish. She asked him to play flute for her. Krishna played the most amazing flute. Radha died in his arms or so called merged into him and Krishna as his tribute to Radha, destroyed his flute and never played thereafter!.. How romantic..!

I wish I could say that. The theist in me wanted to find the logic behind every part of the story, yet the logical and the feminine in me brushed off the belief in the story. The story is far from romantic; forget about being idealized by the world for we all know that Radha and Krishna are considered the epitome of love and romance in Hindu mythology!

Many questions arose after reading this story. The first one, when Krishna became the king of Mathura why did he not marry Radha at that time? If they were so called two bodies and one soul then the marriage would definitely not have hindered his path towards greater deeds and achievements..! (if we consider marriage as an obstacle at all). Or was the message which was meant to be conveyed that “Love is not a strength but a weakness, even for Gods”?

And there is little chance of Radha having gotten married while the lord was away, as the time lapse between Krishna leaving Vrindavan and Krishna defeating Kansa was not years!

So the question remains unanswered. Why did their love not culminate in marriage and why did the God of all Gods let his beloved get married unwillingly to another person? As a layman I am forced to think that a normal person would have made perhaps a little more effort for a girl he loved so dearly.

There is a fair chance that Radha was still unmarried at the time Krishna became the king. The question is why did he not marry Radha? Even later when he had 16008 wives - why did he not make the effort to make it 16009 by marrying Radha? Did he even try to find Radha or inquire about her whereabouts? No - at least not as per this story! Now let us come to the second part of the story, when poor Radha still not able to erase Krishna’s love from her heart reaches his palace. Here comes the most heartbreaking part when, in full knowledge of Krishna (he was the supreme power so nothing could be hidden from him) Radha joined as one of the ordinary maids in the palace. Now what kind of love is this when your beloved works as a maid in your palace and you in your full knowledge and power allow it to happen? There has to be some explanation for this before we accept their love as the epitome of romance. The misery of Radha increased to such an extent that she finally decided to go physically far away from Krishna as per the story. Finally Lord woke up from his slumber and got hold of Radha during her last minute, played a flute and broke it after playing. Tribute to so called love of his life. How filmy! Even if this would be a Bollywood story which is full of illogical portrayals, we won't have accepted our hero as so helpless and weak or may be selfish! But here how can we question the supreme authority? All logic and explanation fails!

One doubt that arises in my mind is that though we worship Radha too and regard her as no less than a Goddess; do we actually feel the injustice that was done to her feelings, her love for Krishna? In order to justify the actions of Lord Krishna are we even treating Radha as a human forget about treating her like a Goddess. She seems to me like just another of Krishna’s adornment like peacock feather or flute! Harsh but true.

The second theory suggests that once Sudama came to meet Lord Krishna and since the Lord was resting, Radha asked him to leave. This pissed Sudama thoroughly and so he cursed Radha that she would be separated from Krishna for next 100 years!

Simple!

Nobody is to be blamed! As always the ' curse ' comes as a scapegoat to hide any inefficiency or incapability mostly from the side of Gods. Curse occupies second position after ‘God's divine power, God knows' or God has mysterious ways of working' in such stories! All these phrases are used as per convenience to make any deed logical or right.

The second disagreement I have with the theory is as far as the character of Sudama is portrayed at various places, he looks anything but an angry person by nature and his love and devotion for Lord Krishna is so great that it would be hard imagining him using a curse that would cause immense pain and trauma to not only his Lord’s beloved but also to the Lord himself!

So was it on an impulse? Or was he also cursed to curse his dear friend and his beloved?

Even if we agree that Sudama did dare to curse someone he worshipped and was devoted to (sounds contradictory though) then the fact that years later even after knowing all this, Krishna visits him, Sudama washes his feet and rest of the episode is history, which I am sure we all have read and heard many times, and there is no sourness between the two, neither do we hear about Sudama asking for forgiveness from the Lord. The story looks incomplete and surely some parts are missing.

Even after knowing this, Krishna is happy with Sudama. Was it not a kind of betrayal towards Radha? Ok I agree that perhaps this was too much to expect from the Lord, but what about Radha? Was her entire life to be turned upside down just because of a crazy Brahman (if we actually believe that he cursed)? And the Lord did nothing? For all his mysterious ways of working, his tricks, everything failed as far as Radha was concerned.  I would never believe that there was anything that was beyond the reach and power of Lord Krishna, and if there was anything, he had his own ways to get it or achieve it. Some might call it deceit, trickery and some might call it divinity! To each his own.  The point remains that nothing was beyond his capability. Mahabharata is full of such instances. So was it merely callousness on his part? I would tend to believe so!

The third theory suggests that there was no Radha. She was added later to spread the words about Lord’s mahima. Only, in this case it appears to have backfired!

As per another source Radha was a symbol of pure love, dedication, true divinity and her love for Krishna is symbolic to human quest towards divinity.  While at some places it has been mentioned that Radha was incarnation of Goddess Lakshmi herself and is worshipped as such at various places like Bengal, Assam and Odisha, some sources claim that Radha was none other than Krishna only and was the symbol of hladani energy. The physical form was taken so that Krishna can enjoy both the forms of love and preach to the world the true lesson of divinity and dedication.

So basically this again compounds the theory that basically there was no physical Radha. It was just a symbolic adornment of Krishna. This theory might be a cover up for the incapability, indifference and flirtatious nature of Krishna himself! Who knows? Maybe centuries later the future generation has doubt believing that there was any Krishna too or maybe he also was just a symbol of love, flirting, care, deceit, tricks, and many more of such mixed emotions.. God knows!

But let us assume that there was Krishna and hence there was Radha and their love story  and raasleela was as true as the existence of sky and earth and let's go through other different versions of story that are popular.

There is another popular story that explains the reason behind Sudama's curse on Radha. Once Sri Krishna was enjoying raasleela with Radha in a secluded forest of Goloka. It is said that during the raasleela, Radha was so deeply immersed in the bliss that she couldn't make out when Krishna left and engaged in raasleela with another gopi, Viraja. (The reason behind this and the technique is beyond my understanding though!) But as the famous saying goes.. "Hari anant hari katha anantha"..! I am reminded of some Govinda movie where he romances two heroines in a same song! Now I know the source of that idea!

Anyways, coming back to mythology, when Radha comes to know about this deed of Krishna she gets very angry and reaches Krishna's palace where he was doing his raasleela with Viraja. Sudama tries to stop her from entering but Radha was furious.

During the course of argument they curse each other. Radha gets cursed to go into human form, since she behaved like one, fall in love with Krishna again and get separated for 100 years and then unite. On hearing the chaos Krishna emerges while Viraja gets scared and leaves her body and gets converted into river that surrounds Goloka.

Absurd as it may sound, this is one of the stories that again created doubt about the spiritual duality of Krishna as Radha. There are many questions that come to mind after reading this version of the story. First, if Radha is a part of Krishna and resides within him, as they are one soul and two bodies then why did Krishna need to do raasleela with another gopi? And if he did so then why did Radha get angry?

If she was a part of Krishna, why did she feel deceived? And if they both were one soul then is it possible for even Lord of Lords to deceive one's soul if it was deception as we mortals perceive it?

Now let us consider the second possibility which is more comprehensible that Radha and Krishna were separate entity and Radha was a beautiful gopi madly in love with Krishna and so was Krishna. Then why did Krishna need to cheat on Radha when there was no compulsion or need to do that. This was done purely out of desire and behind the back of Radha. How’s this one sided love story then considered an epitome of romance?  This does not even appear like a love story!

Now again coming back to Sudama, first of all to repeat myself that Sudama's image is so docile and subdued in the entire myth that he being the one to use curse sounds absurd, especially on his best friend’s beloved, but then in mythology there is hardly any brahmin who has not cursed even once during his life. So, ok let’s assume that he did curse in order to save his Lord from any embarrassment in front of Radha and Viraja! And even if we go by the story, we do not hear or read about Krishna getting angry or even sad or disappointed with Sudama as he was the one who caused a century's separation from Radha, neither do we hear of Krishna getting pained and agonized by the thought of separation. Was there a subtle hint of Krishna thanking Sudama for trying to save him from an embarrassment? So this situation again raises questions on the so called love story of Radhe Krishna and his feelings towards Radha!

We are told that chanting Radha makes Krishna happy (is that the reason we treat her as Goddess as the ulterior motive is to get the blessing of Krishna?), but then why did cursing Radha not make Krishna unhappy and sad?

Seems Lord could conquer all the humanly feelings like anger, hate, jealousy etc except for few like cheating, deceit, lust and trickery!

There is another story that says that Radha was tortured by her in laws in the absence of her husband who was a merchant. Radha found solace in the company of Krishna. When words spread like fire that Radha was having an affair with Krishna, her husband went to check if it was true before confronting his wife. Then Krishna transformed himself to Kali and all her husband saw was Radha worshipping Kali. Her husband seeing this understood the bond between Radha and the Almighty. He then took her away from her in-laws.

It is believed that Radha acknowledged her love for Krishna and her husband understood the depth of it and forgave her as there is no information about Radha leaving her husband or her husband abandoning her. This side of the story fits with most of the popular stories about Radhe Krishna.

Now even in this story Krishna takes no onus of the relationship with Radha. It's Radha who goes through all the humiliation and accusations.

All he does is change his appearance from Krishna to Kali so that Radha's husband sees the real form of their relation/ or this was done in order to deceive the husband?! Who knows – Again: “Prabhu ki mahima”? But I have only one question here:  If he could actually take the form of kali then why did he have to be in the form of Krishna and perform rasleela with other gopies as well as Radha and cause her embarrassment?

All i am trying to say is if these stories were spread in order to spread the goodwill and divine power of Krishna, then they seem to have done just the opposite if one tries to analyze it critically. That leads to another point that maybe these stories were initially made up by people who were not on Krishna's side and were gradually spread by the followers with slight manipulations over a period of time without understanding the ulterior motive of these stories.

And the followers were so blinded by their faith in divinity that they missed the point the stories were trying to make. Sounds bit exaggerated but if black can be replaced by peacock blue (most of the places) while portraying Krishna when the name itself means ' dark like a night' just because we are still color blind in our mind or because we still cannot wholeheartedly portray our Gods as black (except for  kali where we have no other option but to portray her in black ) as it was considered the color of mainly the asuras. Then missing the message the story actually conveys by the followers seems very much possible.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are my personal opinion and although I am a theist, i believe that logical analysis of the popular stories related to almighty should be done in order to understand what was true and what was not, for God is a supreme power and he doesn't need illogical and absurd stories to prove his supremacy. You are most welcome to put in your views and other information relevant to Radha- Krishna relationship (with the source of info mentioned). I shall be more than happy to go through it and rectify my opinion if satisfied.

For all the self-appointed messengers of God I would like to put across my point more clearly and I do hope it doesn't come across as any justification. I am a firm believer in God although I don't know and I don't care that whether it exists in the form of Krishna, Kali, Durga, Shiva or it is just inside all of us.

However I do believe that there is a supreme power above/within all watching us and guiding us in its own unique way.

And if the purpose of such stories were solely entertainment, then trying to justify irrational and illogical actions by saying it is ‘prabhu ki leela’ seems unfair to the almighty himself.

Sources

Srimad Bhagavatam

The Stories of Krishna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Sri Brhad Bhagavatamrta by Gopiparanadhana Dasa 

Brahma Vaivartha Purana

Geetha Govindam by Jayadev

Raasa Panchaadhyayi by Sri Karapathra Pada

Chaitanya Charitamrita by Krishnadas Kaviraja Goswami

Image Credit: sriradha.org, https://www.sriradha.org/brindavaneswari3/brindavaneswari_3_4_9.html