Sakhē | The Separation

Sakhē

Heart break was not a new concept for Krishna.

He had felt the soul crushing agony of his heart crumbling into nothing for the entirety of his life.

The day he had to leave Vrindavan, the carefree days of childhood snatched. The separation from the Queen of Gopikas, who would always have a piece of him buried with her. The harrowing days spent hopeless in the quest for his Rukmininandan.

The day he had heard the phantom shrieks of helplessness arising from the ignominious depths of a defiled court, the altar of the divine feminine desecrated forever. The day he had seen his beloved sister at his doorstep, her pretty face marred with painful tears and the embers of humiliation burning in her broken heart and a child with shuttered eyes, hiding behind her skirts.

The day he had seen the same child, lying lifeless on the ground, his broken body mutilated by the avarice of men and the aftermath of a horrifying conspiracy that would forever haunt the halls of humankind.

Yet, never before had he felt this searing emptiness following the unbearable anguish of a shattered heart.

A gut wrenching agony ripping unfillable gorges through the fabric of his soul and making him spiral into a fathomless void which threatened to consume the entirety of creation in it's deadly jaws.

A pain which made the Lord of the Universe wish he had never created the lives of men at all.

For the first time in his rather long life, Krishna Vasudeva of Dwarka wished he himself had managed to learn the art of detachment he had waxed so lyrical about, to the world, if indirectly, at the wake of the Kurukshetra war.

It looked like he hadn't been very successful in practising what he had preached.

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Krishna saw him everywhere.

In the sparkling stars housed at the bosom of the inky expanse of the night sky, their silvery glitter reminding the divine flute player of his ever favourite ivory robes.

In the rain washed earth which reminded the king of cowherds of the near heady petrichor drenched cedar sprinkled sweet fragrance of his curly raven hair.

In the bright white grins of the dark skinned urchins jumping around at the edges of the dusty streets of Dwarka.

In the saltine yet teasing songs of the husky voiced Gandharvas.

In the pealing ghungroos of the swan limbed dancers.

In the raucous shuttling of chariots.

In the sharp twangs of war bows.

He was present like an apparition haunting Krishna's every single waking moment and then materialised in his sweetest dreams like a siren song and occasionally like a rampaging sledgehammer in his worst nightmares.

Balarama had very discreetly exchanged every single one of the white coloured steeds from their extensive stables. Satyaki had cleared off the armoury of any kind of bow and all their arrows. Rukmini had forbidden anyone in the queen's palace to even entertain the dancing troops.

Krishna knew his family was trying their level best to support him.

To spare him.

But little did they realise that this grief could not be buried. It had him in a chokehold, strangling him with barbed wires and looming over his entire body like a shroud of utter darkness.

He could barely breathe through it.

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"Will you never play the flute again, grandfather?"