As we informed earlier, going forward we will look forward to volunteer kids to run our weekly Kahoot recap quiz. We are happy and glad that it has generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm. Anagha was our first volunteer Kahoot quiz master. Thanks to her father and family in helping her put together the Kahoot quiz and running it
It was time for a popcorn reading of Bala Bhagavatham. The chapter for the popcorn reading was continuation of Lord Krishna's birth.
The episode continues from where we left off last class (s)- Yashoda takes a huge sigh of relief seeing Krishan unharmed and playing joyfully on top of the wicked and ugly dead body of Putana...
Maa yashoda after coming back home performs the ceremony to ward of evils (drishti/ nazar) to ensure no new bad things happen to the darling vrindavana, but destiny had planned something elese
As per custom, Nanda's family became busy with preparations for naming ceremonies, although villagers wanted it to be huge, sensing some danger, Nanda wanted it to be a low key affair. On one auspicious day and muhuratam, Nandbaba, invites sage Garg to his home to perform the ceremony. Sage Garg first performs the ceremony to another baby that was born to Vasudeva from his first wife Rohini who also happened to live in Gokul. Garg rishi names Rohini's son as Balarama - the powerful one and blesses him to be a powerful warrior when he grows up. After naming balarama, Garg muni takes Yashoda's baby into his lap and looks at the dark skinned beautiful kid - instantly names him "Krishna - the one with dark skin" Krishna in sanskrit literally means black. Everyone will be surprised to know that even krishna was bullied and taunted by his fellow kids on his name and skin color and was called Kanha/ Kannayya the black one. All it tells that human psychology and kids' instincts have been the same since time immemorial. There are beautiful episodes throughout all indian languages on this - one is the famous from Sant Surdas's Sur sagar. Krishna used to constantly complain to Yashoda on the predicament he was in - kids around him always used to taunt him - why is his mother Yashoda fair and why Krishna is black/ dark skinned.
Krishna was growing up and soon became a darling of the village, while they were all tired of his antics - stealing the freshly made butter, yogurt and all the mess he and his entourage used to leave behind, but none could come close to taking him to task and admonish him. As soon as they wanted to teach him a lesson or admonish him, they would take one look at his iface and would feel guilty looking at his innocent face.
One day Balrama caught Krishna eating dirt from the ground and drags him to Yashoda and complains to her about Krishna. Krishna plays his usual trick and poses an innocent face and denies the whole thing. Yashoda was already fed up with his antics and was worried about him becoming sick and demanded that Krishna open his mouth and prove his innocence. Krishna eventually opens his mouth and to the astonishment of Yashoda sees all the 14 worlds, the entire universe!!!
Krishna along with all his friends would take all the cows to pastures for grazing early in the morning and return while the sun was setting. During these daylong outings, Krishna and friends would have many adventures. During one of such outings, after having the sumptuous lunch packed by their mothers, the kids were lazily rolling on the green pastures while the cows were grazing in the distance, one of the cowherd boys spotted a huge slide in a distance and sets out to explore. He takes a few of his buddies and strats off to explore the giant, weird slide that seemed like the slope of a giant hill. Krishna was lost in playing his flute and did not notice that all his mates were upto. All the kids run towards the slope and soon get trapped by the slimy thing on the so-called slide. Kids call out for help as they struggle to get off it as they the slope slowly retracting into a giant hole. Krishna, upon hearing the kids cries for help, runs towards them to help. As he approaches closer and closer to it - he realizes that this was neither a slope nor a big hole. It was the tongue of a giant serpent asura - aghasura and the giant hole was his mouth and he was slowly swallowing the kids one by - of course it's real intent was to kill Krishna. Aghasura was a sibling of Putana and wanted to avenge the death of his sister at the hands of Krishna. As the kids, unable to get off the tongue, get swallowed one by one, Krishna runs and struggles to get a foothold on the asura's tongue and fails repeatedly. Aghasura, seeing this, starts to slowly roll up and retract his tongue to stop Krishna falling off so that he can swallow him too and eventually crush him to death in his belly. Krishna was smarter than that, as soon he reaches the throat of the giant, he lands punches to the giant's throat with such pressure and force, aghasura groans in pain and cannot swallow. Such duelling continues and Krishna continues to land heavy blows to the serpent asura and eventually is able to tear apart a huge hole though which gushes out all the intestinal juices of the serpent and the kids who lay dead in it. Having vanquished Agahsura, Krishna slowly helps each kid to come back to wake state and recounts to them what happend.
Meanwhile, in Mathura, Kamsa was not happy and continued to explore ways and means to kill his angel of death who was still living out somewhere out there. As part of this devious design, he summons another demon Bakasura (not to be confused buy a similar demon from Mahabharata). Baka in Sanskrit translates to a crane bird. So Bakasura was a giant crane with ferocious beak and jaws. Bakasura, having heard about the deaths of Putana and aghasura did not want to meet the same fate, resits but eventually bows to the wishes of wicked wishes of Kamsa and sets out to kill little Krishna - alas only to the meet the same fate - death at lord Krishna's hands.
This ended our popcorn reading and it was time to watch little Krishna episodes together with everyone. We played 20 minutes of the Krishna movie and the kids wanted more - but it was time for aarati and saying goodbyes for the week. Below are the youtube links to the bhagavad slokas for last two weeks
until we meet next
Shivram & Meena
