The Demise of God

The death of Krishna is disturbing. Krishna, who had been my reason to believe in Hinduism, dies too at the end. As I finished another interpretation of Mahabharata for the third time, my heart is filled with agony. My belief in Krishna made me feel that I can have a niche in the religion. I can be somewhere between a staunch fundamentalist and intolerant secularist. I cannot be atheist. Somehow, I always managed to escape the death of the super hero in the earlier versions but this time my heart is filled with grief after reading about his death in detail. Krishna, the strategist dies the meanest death possible in the history. He dies like a commoner when the arrow of the hunter hits him. Unlike Duryodhana’s and Karna’s death, when petals fell from the sky on their bodies, Krishna dies an unknown death; his offence being breaching dharma at various points and here I was illusioned to believe that Krishna is the super hero of the history. As a ritual of my life, I visited the Krishna today; I looked into his eyes and asked him, ‘Are you here?’ I am deeply hurt to know that Krishna was mortal too. There is a sense of emptiness, too personal to explain in words. At Krishna’s death it’s Karna’ lines which give me some sense of relief, I see it now: this world is swiftly passing. Ironically, I know deep down that when I would be reading Mahabharata for the nth time, I would still be asking Krishna for all the support to read about his death. Such is the illusion created by Krishna.

P.S: This note is inspired by the novel 'The Difficulty Of Being Good' by Gurcharan Das.