Krishna and I

There are some instances that you just can't forget – no matter how young you were when it happened. I must have been ten and little Sri less that two. My grandmother sat on the floor in her signature posture with one leg folded and the other stretched, as she busily rolled out the little seedai spread and with a watchful eye monitored the frying of the same. Sri was a charming young lad who lived next door. Just so you know back in my time a child of one house was free to enter any house within the neighbourhood and spend carefree hours of play and mischief, and if it was meal-time it was only natural that the child would be fed without a second thought or sanitised diet charts - by anyone who is engaging the child. So as my sister and I sat wide eyed listening to my grandfather – the most charming man one can ever meet - narrate Krishna's mischief, Sri crawled from his house to mine, my grandmother chattered with him and he in his monosyllables responded to her and when she wasn't looking put his curious hands into the freshly made vella seedai and put it in his mouth, "Grandma, look! Sri is eating the prasadam before the offering is made to Krishna… it is wrong, isn't it, neivedyam has to be done right?" I shouted in distress "Vidu, He is my Krishna today, I am sure it is Krishna here in Sri's form and he has come to eat whatever I have made" Said my grandma who always was clad in a nine yard saree, had never broken a religious rule, was accepted in marriage simply because she could chant the sahasranamam… I smiled and helped myself to a few savouries myself and when she gave me the sharp look I said "Why? Am I not Krishna too?" my grandfather laughed and said "Yes! You are! Everyone is Krishna" and there it was my first lesson on the divine. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt9UgG_lLHU