Legends speak of the Three Krishnas, united in mind as well as heart. United as one they may be, yet each of them is apart from the other. Time distorts the three friends, stories getting taller, yet obscuring the human virtues and vices.
The stories speak of the guidance Krishna Govinda gave Yagnaseni and Arjun, each turning to him as they flounder. They speak not of the days Govinda himself turns to his friends for support as the Yadavas, quarrelsome by the day, exasperate him. He is human as any other, for all that patience is one of his many qualities. The stories do not speak of Arjun and Krishn, sitting side by side, long into the night, puzzling over political allegiances and fraying tempers, each helping the other. Nor do they speak of Yagnaseni’s astute head for numbers and facts the men overlook, her subtle but effective support.
The stories, dry as they are, do not tell the whole, rather, only the part they wish. The whole is left for us to divine on our own. They gloss over moments spent laughing with Satyabhama, the ‘pillars of politics’ as she calls them. Too much is lost to the wind.
It is to the wind we turn, to the rain, to those lost moments that drip through. The wind that makes Panchali shiver, Govind run his hands through his hair. The wind that makes Arjun offer Panchali a wrap and laugh at his sakha, his own curls unruly. The wind that masks ‘sensitive’ conversations, for even walls have ears.
Those conversations are hardly sensitive in truth, they are the moments the three friends unload their frustrations on each other. Many a colorful word has escaped Arjun, known for his calm. Many times, Panchali, wrongly painted as vengeful alone, has calmed her husband and her sakha. And Govind? His eerie imitations of the Samrat at his gravest has made them laugh more times than can be counted.
Arjun gets soaked in the rain without fail, his sincere joy making even a broody Govind grin. Panchali shakes her head, amused and fond.
Arjun shakes his wet hair at them, laughing at the exclamations of ‘Parth!’
Known only to select people are the moments Govind and Arjun savour in secret. Incognito, free, alone but for themselves, mingling with the people as one of them. Govind is forever thankful that Arjun’s tendency to look down uncomfortably when anyone speaks of his own feats, or worse, his handsomeness, hasn’t spoiled these rare moments free of worries.
Panchali and Govind bond differently. He alone knows her from before, in this strange new world, this liminal arrangement where she belongs to the Pandavas and they to her, but fluid enough and confusing enough for calumnies to arise. He helps her navigate when she needs it, as he will Arjun, far into the future, when the need arises.
The stories forget much and more. From the first introduction where Govind winked at Arjun, a bubbly ‘your father called you Krishna? Then it is confirmed that we are meant to be friends, for you are me and I am you,’ with a smirk on his lips, Arjun’s own incredulous, yet inexplicably comfortable response to the last moments they were together, the mourning Arjun and Yagnaseni do for their friend, the hollow satisfaction in seeing to his legacy...
The three Krishnas themselves, in life, have forgotten more moments they spent together than the stories remember.
Yet, one thing, the stories got absolutely right. Through thick and thin, they were together, a unit to be reckoned with. They were equals and complements to each other, something the later fables fumble with. In spite of that, they endure in our memories, as they shall for a long time to come.
