Mother Yashoda wakes me up early and takes me in her arms to nurse me. It is before the sun is up when she bathes me. I twitch my leg in the warm water, splashing her face. She looks at me for a brief moment with shock, then laughs out loud. Watching her laugh, I move my limbs harder and burst out laughing.
She doesn't notice the Shrivatsa crest buried beneath my dark skin. The torchlight makes it hard to see what Mother Yashoda is wearing.
Father Nanda comes out of his room looking happy and rejuvenated, wearing a formal dhoti-kurta, with a stole.
The peace of dawn breaks with the chirping of birds and the crow of roosters. Brahmin priests arrive with rays of the rising sun. Mother Rohini rushes out with Bhratashri in her arms to greet them and leads them into the house.
Mother Yashoda and Father greet them. In the presence of the priests, Father feeds me a spoonful of sweet Ghutti. Mother ties a thick black thread around my waist to "ward off evil". It fills me with old light. This ancient custom was just as immanent the last time I walked here. Except last time, a Kshatriya family raised me.
Guests have started showing up. Handsome gopa men and lustrous gopa women, and the energetic young gopas and gopis, casually walk in with handcrafted articles or their farm produce as gifts. The lives of village people are sublimely intertwined, almost like an extended family.
The priests light a sacred fire in the middle of the house and start incanting Vedic hymns. The rhythm has changed again. I notice that the melody of the hymns has much transmuted since the Treta Yuga. The atmosphere warms up as they praise Indra and Agni. Worship and sacrifices to Indra are still as common as they used to be.
Then I confront my worst nightmare. Being snatched from the lap of one gopa woman into the lap of another almost overwhelms me. Most of the other guests are sitting cross-legged, listening to the sacred hymns. One of the young women takes me into her lap and affectionately touches my nose, making me sneeze. She lets out a squeak and gets scolded for interrupting the priests' chants.
"Looks like you're having fun, Kanha!" says Bhrata Balram, laughing at me.
Hmph! Embarrassed, I respond, I'll show you what real fun is!
The chanting of the Vedic hymns finishes, and guests gather in the front yard for celebrations. There is a big, muscular man near the butter pots. A handful of butter levitates out of one of the pots and glides right behind the muscular man's neck. Bhratashri looks at it and figures out exactly who the culprit is. He looks at me in shock.
"Don't you dare!" he says, stuck in the arms of Mother Rohini.
I wink at him. The butter hits the man's neck like a wet rag. In reaction, he scoops out more butter from the nearby pot and throws it at the only person behind him in throwing range.
That sparks a battle, the winner of which is the one who gets to eat the butter in the commotion. In the chaos, the gopa girls free me from their grip, and unnoticed, I crawl straight towards the butter.
Bhratashri shamelessly toddles towards me and starts eating the butter, enjoying the mayhem. "I must say," he babbles with butter in his mouth, "that's really unfair!"
Seriously?! I give him a side-eye.
Mother Yashoda notices me and runs towards me in panic. I take my hands out of the butter pot and look at her with innocent eyes. "Who left my Kanha here?!" she exclaims.
Mother's angry remark turns the turmoil to dead silence. I look for butter-laden Bhratashri. He's gone...
After Father calms her down, he declares a feast. The villagefolk cheer for him, and Mother Yashoda cheers up as well.
The feast ends with satisfied stomachs. Father then goes on to donate a significant portion of his wealth to charity. He donates Nishakas worth two million cows, and about seven mountain measures of grain. That's about five years of harvest from the whole village.
That doesn't just show how wealthy he is, but also shows how unattached he is to material wealth.