Mothering God

Ma Yashoda with Her Gopal

We all know the story of Putana, the demoness. She was known as the baby killer. Smearing her breasts with deadly poison, she would go around camouflaging a beautiful form of an elegant lady and mothering young babies she put them to death. King Kamsa who was always looking for ways to kill little Krishna, hired her services sending her to gokul to eliminate the Divine Child.

The legend goes that Putana came to Gokul in a divinely beautiful form and entered the home of Nanda. Thinking of her as some Goddess in human form, Mother Yashoda offered her dear baby to her to be mothered. As soon as little Krishna sucked her breasts, Putana panicked realizing that her life was being sucked out. Try as she may, Krishna wouldn’t leave her. She ran out even assuming her hideous gigantic form, but Krishna sucked her life out. It is said that her form fell on an area of around 12 miles turning all to dust.. The villagers had to cut her body to cremate it. Surprisingly the smoke from the cremation was fragrant, because all her sins had been wiped out owing to her death at the hands of the Divine. This is the story known to all.

Yet there are some strange features here.

Krishna has millions of devotees over the ages. Many of these spent lifetimes in devotions, contemplation and singing His glories. Yet none have had the grace and privilege that this demoness had. She had the grace to see the Divine form, She had the greater grace of touching the divine form.. but above all she had the rarest privilege of mothering the divine baby. Such grace that is bestowed on the rarest souls! How did such a sinful creature get such grace? What is the mystery behind this?

The answer to this lies in the Vishnu Purana.

Eons ago when this very baby Krishna came to the court of King Bali as the baby sage Vamana; the daughter of the king by the name Ratnamala upon seeing the baby sage had an upsurge of maternal emotion. She was taken by the little divine form and yearned to play with him and relate with him and care for him in a motherly way. However later when this very baby sage took a gigantic form and covered with his 2 steps the world and the heavens and with his third step he pushed the noble King Bali down to the nether world, Ratnamala was aghast at the treatment meted out to her dear father and in her fury felt like killing the baby sage.

God always fulfills every sincere desire of His true devotees.

It was this very Ratnamala who was reborn as Putana the demoness. In getting an opportunity to mother Krishna and also kill Him, God was merely fulfilling the wish expressed by a true devotee in an earlier life. The devoted also say that Krishna didn’t have to kill her. Fact is when Putana saw baby Krishna, yet again her motherly instincts rose. She forgot herself and her purpose and in her emotion took the beautiful child in her arms to mother Him, completely unmindful of the fact that her breasts were smeared with poison. When Krishna gave her the satisfaction of feeding him, owing to her desire being fulfilled, she became free forever and hence had no more reason to live. Hence she dropped dead.

Strange yet beautiful are the ways of the Lord.

It is said that in the afterlife this demon Putana was awarded a place in Vaikuntha, the celestial Divine realm which was reserved for Mothers of the Divine like Yashoda, Devaki, Kaushalya, Eashwaramba, owing to the fact that she had Mothered God.