Yasoda: Foster mother to Krishna

Yasoda: Foster Mother to Krishna

You all have heard of Krishna and his evil uncle, King Kansa, but not many of you have heard of Yasoda the foster-mother of Krishna. Yasoda is kind of an overlooked character in the story of Krishna. Do not underestimate Yasoda though. She raised Krishna and therefore probably has some juicy details that Krishna has been holding back on us. Well, guess what, loyal fans, you are in luck. We got a hold of Yasoda and you will not believe what we discovered.

The story of Krishna’s childhood has always been kind of unambiguous. Krishna never really got into great detail about it; he has been kind of known to beat around the bush a lot. Makes you wonder what he is hiding, doesn’t it? 

Well, let’s start from the beginning. Okay, so we know that Krishna escaped from the hands of his malicious uncle Kansa but we do not really know what happens after this. Good thing you have us, am I right? 

Here is what our source informed us. Even though Krishna was able to escape from Kansa’s prison, Kansa never gave up. He continued his search for Krishna. He went as far as killing innocent babies throughout his kingdom. It was one thing to kill Krishna’s siblings but now ALL of the babies of the land. It gets worse. Kansa killed these innocent babies though a vampire-nurse named Putana. Putana would appear in the form of a beautiful woman. With her beauty she would lure parents to give her their child to “cradle.” She would pretend to “cradle” the child by breastfeeding him. Here is the catch: her breast was filled with poison. Fortunately, when Putana was “cradling” Krishna, Krishna did not fall for the trick. He actually defeated Putana by revealing her true colors, which was pretty ugly. According to Yasoda, she was a grotesque-looking beast. There goes her modeling days.

I guess I can see why Krishna would want to keep this on the down low. He did not want everyone to know every embarrassing detail about his family drama. I mean there is nothing to be embarrassed about, Krishna. Everybody has that black seed in their family. I do not know about you but I think Kansa is kind of mentally ill but do not take my word for it -- I am no doctor.  

(Baby Krishna)

On a lighter note, Yasoda told us some cute stories about Krishna when he was a kid. When he was finally able to crawl on all-fours apparently he was quite the difficult child to keep up with. He would crawl into the mud and smear the mud all over his body. He would even eat the mud. Can you imagine that? The great God Krishna rolling around in the mud and eating it like some commoner! Another funny story about the God Krishna is that apparently when he was a kid he was quite the thief. Now that is hard to imagine. A God stealing. When he was a kid he would make his way into dairies and help himself. He would take cream, butter, and pretty much anything else of his pleasing. Looks like little Krishna was quite the rascal. 

Hopefully you enjoyed reading this because there will be lots more. Until next time, Insider readers!

Author's Note:

My story was based on The Divine Childhood . I wrote my whole story in a gossip tone. The majority of my story focused on Kansa and how he tried to kill Krishna by using the vampire- nurse.  I did not really change anything about this portion of the story except that I excluded the small detail of how Krishna killed the vampire nurse. He did not suck the poison but did suck the vampire- nurse’s soul, causing her to lose her beauty. I only mentioned a few of the stories concerning what kind of baby Krishna was. I did not include all of the stories about what kind of person Krishna was because I felt like it was not necessary. I wanted to focus on all of the scandals of Krishna so I felt like a lot of Krishna’s childhood stories were irrelevant to my theme. I just wanted to focus on what was considered “drama” or entertaining to readers. Some stories. I excluded from my story were the story of how he kicked a wagon which caused a demon to be killed, the story of how he a long rope attached to cart, or how Yasoda would punish Krishna when he was being bad.

"The Divine Childhood" by by Sister Nivedita, from  Cradle Tales of Hindiusm (1972). Web Source: Public Domain Edition