The Disintegration of the House of Vrishnis
After leaving Hastinapur, Krishna ruled over Dwaraka for some time. But as predicted by him, his clan soon began to disintegrate, day by day. He felt frustrated to see his kinsmen sinking deep into moral decadence. Everyone now took to liquor and revelry. Complete lawlessness prevailed everywhere.
Then, one day, there was a commotion in the city. A few drunken miscreants had decided to play a prank on some sages who were passing by. They dressed one of their youngsters ‘as a pregnant woman’ and asked the sages if ‘she’ would deliver a boy or a girl. But seeing through the prank, the sages became wrathful and they inflicted a curse on ‘the pregnant woman’. They said that ‘she’ would give birth to an iron pestle instead of a human being, and the city would plunge into family feuds. Indeed, the young Vrishni delivered a pestle, which horrified all the citizens of Dwaraka. In order to avert the curse, the miscreants pulverized the pestle and scattered the powder across the seashore. They now felt confident that the curse had become ineffective. But as time passed, there grew out of the powder some wild rushes, each long and sharp like a sword. These swords now came in handy to the Vrishnis to fight with each other.
Most of them wrangled over old issues, raking up their differences. Kritavarma, who had fought on the side of the Kauravas, accused Satyaki of violating the Kshatriya dharma by killing Bhurisravas while the veteran warrior was in a yogic trance on the battlefield. Heated argument led to a bloody fight, in which everyone joined on one side or the other. Into this fray also plunged Krishna’s son, Pradyumna, who was killed along with several others. Dwaraka was now a city that looked like a battlefield. So his prediction, Krishna thought, was coming true. The Vrishnis were out to destroy themselves, without any enemy attacking them from outside.
Utterly disillusioned, Krishna decided to leave the city and go into a forest to do tapas. After wandering about listlessly for a while, he sat under a huge banyan tree whose branches sprawled all around like the limbs of some primordial animal. He then went deep into a yogic trance. By the time he emerged from his trance, the afternoon glow had faded into dusk. Krishna saw the moon flitting in and out of the clouds. When a gentle breeze began to blow, he felt somewhat drowsy and lay on the ground, his right foot resting on the left. A sense of premonition suddenly seized him and he felt as if he had reached the end of his life. His eyes half-shut, his mind began to conjure up images from his past. He saw before his mind’s eye a pageant of scenes – his childhood in Gokul, the pranks he had played with his brother Balarama and other friends. Also his dalliance with Radha and gopikas. Somehow, his mind flinched from recalling the gruesome images of the eighteen-day war of Kurukshetra. He wished Bharatavarsha had not witnessed that terrible episode.
As Krishna’s eyelids grew heavy, he felt himself sliding into slumber. If Gandhari’s curse had to come true, this was the moment for him to sink into eternal sleep. What could be more peaceful than to pass away in one’s sleep, he thought.
Just then, a hunter, chasing a prey, mistook the sleeping Krishna for a deer. An arrow from his bow pierced Krishna’s right foot. A feeble cry rose from his throat and then he lay, dead. Little did the hunter realize that the man he had mistaken for a deer was a divine being who had himself chosen to shed his mortal frame and return to his place among the gods.
Lightning now flashed across the sky, followed by a thunderclap that shook the earth down to its epicentre. A luminous flame was seen soaring towards heaven, where all the gods were waiting for the divine sojourner to return home.