The Story of Krishna and the Pot of Butter

At a Glance

• Central figures: Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, raised in Vrindavan; his foster mother Yashoda; and the gopis, the cowherd women of the village.
• Setting: The village of Vrindavan, during Krishna’s childhood; from the devotional Hindu tradition surrounding Krishna’s early life.
• The turn: Yashoda catches Krishna stealing butter, tries to tie him to a mortar as punishment, and finds that no rope is ever quite long enough to bind him.
• The outcome: Krishna allows himself to be tied, then drags the mortar between two Arjuna trees, uprooting them and releasing two divine beings who had been cursed to live as trees.
• The legacy: The two cursed beings are freed and ascend to the heavens - an act of liberation that flows from what appeared to be an ordinary childhood punishment.

Krishna had a reputation in Vrindavan before he could walk steadily. The gopis complained to Yashoda constantly - their butter was gone, the pots left overturned, the high shelves raided despite every precaution. They did not complain with any real anger. That was the strange thing. They came to the door flushed and half-laughing, describing the scene, and Yashoda listened and apologized, and everyone understood that nothing would change.

He was her son. He was charming and round-cheeked and he looked at you with those enormous dark eyes and you forgave him before you finished the sentence. That was simply how it was in Vrindavan.

The Missing Pot

The morning Yashoda went to her own kitchen and found the butter pot gone was the morning she decided enough was enough. She had churned that butter herself. She had stored it carefully, hung the pot high. And still it had vanished.

She did not go looking for Krishna immediately. Instead she waited, quiet near the kitchen doorway, watching the courtyard where he played with his friends. She did not have to wait long.

Krishna came padding in from the courtyard, his friends behind him, all of them trying very hard to look like they were doing nothing in particular. He spotted the new pot she had hung from the ceiling - she had replaced the missing one - and his face went entirely serious with the focus of planning. He was perhaps six years old. He organized his friends without a word: a stool here, an overturned vessel there, someone to stand watch. They built themselves a small tower of objects and Krishna clambered up, got his hands around the pot, and the whole group dissolved into quiet, urgent celebration.

He ate butter with his fingers. He handed some to his friends. He fed some to the monkeys who were always nearby when something interesting was happening. His face was smeared white.

Yashoda Steps Out

She could not help it. She laughed first. Then she stepped out from the doorway.

The boys scattered in every direction. Krishna turned and ran for the courtyard, fast and sure-footed, but Yashoda was faster than he expected - she caught him by the wrist and held on. He looked up at her with butter on his chin and that expression that was not quite guilt and not quite innocence but something calculated to lie between the two.

She asked him: why steal butter when there was always butter for him at home, whenever he wanted it?

He smiled. He had no answer to offer that would help his case, and he seemed to know it.

Yashoda looked at her son and decided today she would actually discipline him. She would tie him to the large wooden mortar in the courtyard, and he would sit there until he had thought properly about what he had done. She fetched a rope and knelt down to tie it around his waist.

The Rope That Would Not Reach

The rope was too short. Not by much - just a hand’s width. She tied on another length. Still short. She added more. It kept falling short, always by the same small distance, no matter how much rope she added or how tightly she gathered it. She was on her knees in the courtyard in the afternoon heat, adding rope to rope, and none of it was enough.

She stopped. She looked at her son.

He stood very still. He was watching her with an expression she had not seen on him before - or perhaps she had seen it and not known how to name it. Something gentle and old and not entirely the face of a child.

Yashoda understood, then, what she was looking at. Not the butter thief. Not her little boy. Something that could not be bound by rope because rope was a human thing and what stood in front of her was not only human. The word that came to her was leela - divine play - and the whole afternoon rearranged itself in her mind: the butter, the laughter, the chase, this moment kneeling on the ground. All of it play. All of it deliberate.

Then Krishna, seeing his mother exhausted and overwhelmed and looking at him with tears starting at the corners of her eyes, let himself be tied. He allowed the rope to close around him. He held still while she finished the knot.

The Two Arjuna Trees

He did not stay still for long.

With the mortar dragging behind him on its rope, Krishna wandered to the edge of the courtyard where two large Arjuna trees grew close together. He pulled the mortar through the narrow gap between them. It stuck fast. He pulled harder - pulled with a force that had nothing to do with the size of his arms - and both trees tore out of the ground at the roots and fell.

From the wreckage rose two figures, luminous and shaken, the forms of divine beings who had been locked inside the wood for longer than anyone in Vrindavan could remember. They had been cursed to live as trees, rooted and silent and watching the world pass. Krishna’s touch, even accidental in appearance, had ended the curse. They stood in the ruined courtyard, free, and they bowed to the child who stood between them trailing a rope and a mortar and a face still faintly smeared with butter.

They rose into the sky and were gone.

Yashoda came running at the sound of the trees falling. She found her son standing unharmed between the two uprooted trunks, looking up at the sky with evident satisfaction. She pulled him close and held him, her arms tight around him, not asking questions. In Vrindavan, this was simply how the day went sometimes.