Pure Joy

 Pure joy, unalloyed, unambiguous, unextinguished. Yes, that pure joy is Shri Krishna. Why do these adjectives qualifying the pure joy matter? 'Coz, throughout his life, Krishna had very few reasons to be happy, and yet none could take away his joy.

That is why Krishna is special. Compare him with Shri Rama. Shri Rama is never diplomatic. He is all that is sheer integrity, pure idealism, inalienable conscientiousness. Shri Krishna, on the other hand, would not mind confronting a Karna with "where was your Dharma then?" when Karna quotes it conveniently. Look at the way he deals with Jayadratha, earlier with Jarasandha. 

In other words, Shri Krishna IS aware of the imperfect realities of life. He had to be. He confronted them repeatedly in his life. He had a "mama", his maternal uncle, who wanted him dead even before he was born. To save his life, his father would wade neck deep in a river in full spate. From his birth till his death, Shri Krishna had to face ugly realities constantly, be it Putana Mavashi to his misconstrued death.

Hence the importance of his joy. He celebrates it constantly, and makes others join it. At Nanda's Gokul, gleefully he shares with every child milk, butter, ghee, and so on. In a way, his joy is special because he is sharing with the downtrodden, whom he represents in multiple ways, what belongs to them. 

In the Gowardhan Parvat incident, his joy  again comes from confronting the power of the mighty Indra, angered for no valid reason. Krishna protects a hapless people happily, and makes  them happy, too. 

Each incident in the life of this People's God can thus be explained. He spreads, shares joy again and again despite every conceivable difficulty.  He chooses joy over despair again and again. Throughout his life, he lacked lots of things, repeatedly he had to give up the stable shores that make for easy joy. 

 Yet he chose joy that comes from a creative alternative vision. In the Kuru Kshetra, too, he advises 'duty' because it leads to joy. He tells Arjuna, "If you fight, you would win and rule as an emperor. If you lose, you would ascend to the Heavens as you would be martyred for the right cause, for performing perfectly your duty." 

In other words, repeatedly he offers choices for a happy, joyous existence when every which way the dice is tilted against it. Like the soft sur's of his basari, his flute, joy re-sounds repeatedly as his real message. Hence the need to celebrate his birth, the birth of pure joy, in brief.

Pratima@Janmashtami is also the jayanti of Sant Dnyaneshwar who, too, led an extremely difficult life, and yet at the age of twenty-one, wrote a 'pasaydan' that celebrates yet again, joyful peace! 

Hence the blog today en'joy'ing their vision!