The Blue Magician

• The Sight •

The city was all decked out for the celebrations. The markets were bustling with life. As I walked through the central market located in the heart of the city, I could see people I had never seen before.

Aarya told me that Kartik month's full moon night was very auspicious, and people from every corner of the Bharatvarsha visited Dwarka on this day. People came from Kamboj, Gandhar, Kalinga, and many other faraway kingdoms.
I came from a very secluded village and hardly knew anything other than the household chores that my mother had taught me. So, seeing people in different robes and hearing them speak an alien tongue intrigued me.

I remember that I had urged Aarya to take me to the market, but somewhere deep down I knew that this demand of mine was beyond my boundaries. I was a woman, after all.

But to my surprise, he agreed. He agreed, as if it were a casual thing for a married woman to walk in the market places amidst the crowd of foreign men!

I was caged for so long that now I wanted him to cage me and stop me from making unnecessary demands.

But now as I look back, I realise that he had already learned the art of reading my mind because he smiled and gently said,
"This is Dwarka; no one is caged here."
I suddenly wanted to cry. It felt like the invisible chains tied to my soul were unlocked.

That day, I put on my favourite yellow saaree and explored the streets of my new home. No one was caged in Dwarka.

Men and women walked past the streets buying sweetmeats and other delicacies. Merchants had come from distant lands to sell thier equisite products here. Dwarka, beamed with life.
Aarya then took me to the royal court, where everyone had gathered, hoping to meet their king and queen. I could sense the love in everyone's heart that day.

These people did not refer to their king as Maharaj or any other grandiose title that kings generally use. Their king was simply Krishna, and in the most formal tone, Srinathji (the beloved of Shree or Rukmini). They loved their king as their friend, a mentor, and most of the time as their son. Now this perplexed me even more: a king with whom you feel a certain affinity?

When I saw him from that huge distance, I heard people around me crying with joy. I saw people calling out to him as if he would hear them even in this chaos. I felt uneasy for a moment when my husband, too, started shedding tears.

Suddenly, when I turned to the reason for this commotion, there he was! Standing as brilliantly as the sun, wearing the same shade of yellow dhoti and angvastram as I did. He had a bunch of morpankhs tied perfectly to his black curls, and I could see him stare at me, even from that distance. He stared at me, and for a moment I was in a state of trance. When I returned to normalcy, everyone had left the courtyard premises except Aarya and me.

That night, I could not sleep. I could not fathom the sudden magic this king had over me. I did share the incident with my husband, but he simply laughed.

"His eyes are such. Everyone thinks that they are staring at them. My Krishn is truly a magician!" He remarked.

The night passed without letting me sleep. But the prime concern has changed now. It wasn't the stare. It was the "my" that Aarya had put before Krishn's name. I wanted to decipher this secret at once. I wanted to know who this king was and why my husband and the entire city, for that matter, considered him their very life breath.

That was the beginning of a long, tiresome journey. A journey with a beautiful end.