Butter, Flute and Broken Rules

Musings On Krishna Janmashtami.

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On a humid August night, when the moon was fat and slow, and the air thick with the scent of wet earth, a child was carried across the Yamuna in a wicker basket. Born in chains, yet destined for play, he slipped through prison walls with the river parting in reverence. The eighth son of Devaki and Vasudeva, born under the Rohini star on the eighth night of Shravana, he was not an ordinary child. They say he was Vishnu’s seventh avatar, but between you and me, he hardly acted like the stern god of cosmic order.

For what the world received was Krishna—a butter-thief, a flute-player, a prankster. A boy who believed that joy could be as powerful as thunder. Imagine, if you will, that the universe needed a savior and instead of delivering a lecture, it sent us a boy with twinkling eyes who made mischief sacred. Sometimes I think that was the cleverest trick of all.

Now, you know the story of his butter thefts. The gopis would tie their pots high, well beyond reach, smug in their arrangements. But Krishna and his little gang had more imagination than caution. Climbing onto each other’s shoulders, breaking the pots with sticks, smearing butter on each other’s faces—ah, it wasn’t theft, it was theatre.

I can almost hear one gopi muttering even now:
“Ayyo, ee hudugana nodi! Butter illa, pot illa, but laughter barutte! What will we do with him, Yashoda?”
And Yashoda, weary but not without humour, sighing back:
“Nanna maganu, Krishna. What can I say? Even I can’t catch him.”

Surveillance, you see, was never new. But Krishna turned the gaze into a game. He didn’t run from their eyes—he met them, reclaimed them, and in that moment, the whole act became his. A butter-thief, yes, but also a master of visibility.

Authenticity, though, is the harder riddle. What does it mean to be “true” when you play so many roles? A boy in Gokul, a lover in Vrindavan, a charioteer in Kurukshetra, a statesman in Dwaraka. Did he ever forget who he was? I doubt it. Krishna wore masks as one wears garlands: lightly, joyfully. And yet, behind them, he was unmistakably himself. Perhaps that is authenticity—not clinging to one identity, but being whole even in fragments.

One day, when the gopis complained to Yashoda about his endless tricks, she scolded him:
“Krishna, don’t you feel ashamed? What will people say?”
And he, with butter dripping from his hand, looked up with wide eyes and said,
“Amma, if they are talking about me, at least they are happy. Isn’t that enough?”
You see what I mean. Even his mischief was a lesson in living unapologetically.

As for monotony, Krishna simply refused to acknowledge it existed. Think of Govardhan. When Indra demanded the villagers’ worship, Krishna suggested, with the innocence only he could pull off, “Why not honor the hill instead? After all, it feeds your cows and shades your homes.” The people, bewildered but trusting, followed him. Ritual was disrupted, monotony shattered. Even Indra had to bow to a child’s cheeky defiance. It was divine spontaneity wrapped in play.

But above all, there was joy. Not the fragile, polished kind that needs special conditions. Krishna’s joy spilled from him like milk from an overfilled pot. His laughter was loud, unashamed, and irresistible. The Krishna Purana tells us that when he played the flute, even animals paused to listen. Cows stopped chewing mid-grass, birds hushed their songs, the Yamuna herself slowed her flow. For a moment, all of creation remembered that being alive was enough.

I imagine sitting among the gopis under a starlit sky, the music weaving through us. One of them sighs,
“Krishna, ninna flute odidaaga, yenu maadodu sadhya alla. We forget ourselves.”
And another laughs:
“Forget ourselves? We even forget our husbands! That is the danger of this boy!”
The whole group erupts in laughter, and Krishna only smiles, as if to say: yes, that too is part of the game.

And so here we are, centuries later, in another August. The world has new names for old struggles—surveillance, monotony, authenticity, happiness. And then, in the middle of it all, Janmashtami. How neat, how strange, that his birth falls in this constellation of reminders.

For what Krishna’s life tells us is that joy is not trivial, play is not wasteful, and disruption is not disorder. They are, in fact, the pulse of aliveness. When we laugh at control, when we wear our contradictions, when we dance instead of drag our feet—then we honor him. Not by ritual alone, but by remembering that life itself is a festival worth celebrating.

And if the thought feels too heavy, just imagine this: Krishna, sticky with butter, caught red-handed, smiling up at us as if to say—“Don’t take it all so seriously. Even gods steal butter.”

So may this August bring you his mischief and his music,
May butter touch your hands, and song enter your breath.
May you stand unafraid beneath the world’s gaze,
And laugh at monotony as if it were a child’s game.
May you dance in your own authenticity,
May joy arrive not as a guest, but as your birthright.
And above all, may you carry a little Krishna in your heart—
Not to worship in silence,
But to play with,
To celebrate with,
To live with.

Kalakamini Mata.

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📌 Emotional Sovereignty Grid (Ready Reckoner)

Observance	Theme	Emotional Invitation	Cultural Echo
Authenticity Day	Truth, vulnerability	Show up as your whole self	Inner sovereignty
Surveillance Day	Visibility, resistance	Acknowledge the gaze, reclaim your narrative	Power & control
Break the Monotony Day	Disruption, spontaneity	Shift patterns, invite surprise	Creative agency
Happiness Happens Month	Joy, presence	Notice and amplify moments of happiness	Emotional mapping
Janmashtami	Divine play, cosmic birth	Celebrate Krishna, avatar of love and mischief	Mythic renewal

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