Hindu Mythology Meme | Couples 2/6: Vasudev & Devaki
The human mind and heart are only equipped to feel so much pain and sorrow. Beyond that point, it is simply more pain, more sorrow. Not bigger, greater, grander, just more. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows this to be true. The tear ducts can only produce so many tears at a time. The heart can grieve for only so long. Anything beyond that is simply more of the same. After a time, the mind grows numb. The heart hardens. The spirit withers and starts to die. This is life, says that part of us which enables us to survive holocausts and hurricanes, war and bereavement alike, live through this. And so we do live. We go on. We survive. We endure the unendurable and come out the other side, blinking, dazed, shocked and stupefied, but still alive.
- Krishna Coriolis: Slayer of Kamsa (Ashok Banker)
Ah, VasuDevaki. Where do I even begin to describe these two? Most know them as Krishna’s long-suffering parents whom he liberated from years of confinement and torment after killing the evil Kansa. Know them, but don’t think about them. I’ve always been drawn to them since long before I understood what they endured and what they stood for (in tumblr terms, they’re my OTP of OTPs). And now that I understand, I love them even more.
It started with the prophecy on their wedding day - their son was destined to kill his tyrannical uncle, and said uncle was so enraged that he was ready to behead his newlywed sister on the spot. Vasudev hardly knew her then, but she already meant enough to him that he traded away his freedom to save her life. Thereafter they were confined to a dark, solitary dungeon where year after year, Kansa murdered their newborn children before their eyes. The seventh pregnancy was marked with miracles that renewed their hope, but to them it appeared to have ended in a miscarriage and they had that added grief to bear until they learned the truth. When the long-awaited savior - the eighth son mentioned in the prophecy - was finally born, they prized his safety over the joy of watching him grow up. So they stayed in that same darkness, that same solitude, with only the assurance that Krishna was adored and protected in Vrindavan to keep them going.
While love for Krishna gave them purpose, love for one another gave them the strength to fulfill it. They had no one but each other to talk to, no shoulder but one another’s to cry one, no one else to help them mentally escape from one of the harshest realities any character from Hindu mythology (or dare I say, any character ever) had to endure. They got through it with their sanity and their spirit intact because they had each other. I draw far more inspiration from a love that empowers you to live through such tragedy than other love stories that culminate in self-destruction. Love that is not weakness, but strength.
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