Savithri Rajeevan’s Krishna, translated by Udaya Kumar, is a reflective, ironic and philosophically questioning poem that examines the many possible ways in which Krishna has been imagined, loved and approached within Indian cultural and devotional traditions. The poem is structured around a recurring question: “how should I love him?” This question initially appears to be devotional, as though the speaker is searching for the most appropriate form in which to love Krishna. Yet as the poem develops, the question becomes increasingly complex. Krishna has many mothers, many fathers, many lovers, many symbolic forms, many emotional associations and many mythological identities. He appears as child, lover, friend, charioteer, divine incarnation, music, nature, stone, fear, shade and beauty. The abundance of these forms makes the act of loving him difficult to define.
The poem therefore does not present Krishna through a single conventional devotional image. Instead, it gathers a wide range of mythological, cultural, natural and artistic associations and places them before a modern, questioning consciousness. The speaker is familiar with Krishna tradition and clearly drawn to its richness, but she refuses to surrender her intellectual independence. Her repeated question gradually moves from “how” Krishna should be loved to the more radical final question: “why should I love him?” This change from method to motive gives the poem its deepest significance.
The first movement of the poem begins with Krishna’s many mothers. The speaker names Yasoda and Devaki, representing foster motherhood and biological motherhood, and then extends the category further to Poothana, Kalindi, cows and flowers. Motherhood is therefore not restricted to one biological relationship. Krishna’s maternal world expands across human, mythological and natural realms. Devaki gives birth to Krishna, while Yasoda raises and nurtures him. Poothana is a much more ambiguous maternal figure because she approaches the infant Krishna in the guise of a nursing mother even though her intention is destructive. By including her within the category of motherhood, the poem deliberately unsettles ordinary distinctions between affection and hostility.
The inclusion of cows and flowers expands motherhood even further. Cows are closely associated with Krishna’s pastoral childhood and with nourishment through milk, while flowers suggest tenderness, beauty, nature and devotional offering. By stating that “All of them” are mothers to Krishna, the poem suggests that his identity cannot be confined within ordinary human family structures. The world itself seems to participate in nurturing him.
The same multiplication occurs when the speaker turns to Krishna’s fathers. Vasudeva and Nanda correspond to his biological and foster fathers, just as Devaki and Yasoda represent two forms of motherhood. The poem then extends the paternal category towards Brahma, Yama, “Incarnations” and “unincarnations”. The movement from named human fathers to cosmic and metaphysical concepts enlarges Krishna’s identity beyond genealogy. He belongs simultaneously to human family structures, divine mythology and a realm beyond fixed embodiment.
The repeated line “how should I love him?” thus becomes more difficult to answer with each list. Krishna cannot easily be approached as simply a child, son or god because his identity exceeds any single category.
Mothers, Fathers, Lovers and the Multiplicity of Krishna
The poem next turns from parental relationships to lovers. Once again, singularity disappears. Krishna has “not one” lover but “many”. The speaker names Bhama, Rukmini, Radha and Meera and then refers humorously to “sixteen thousand eight girlfriends”. The use of the modern conversational word “girlfriends” is striking because it brings ancient mythology into a contemporary idiom. The tone becomes lightly irreverent without losing seriousness.
Rukmini and Satyabhama belong to the traditions of Krishna as husband and royal lover. Radha represents the powerful tradition of divine romantic love, while Meera represents a later devotional tradition in which Krishna becomes the beloved of the devotee. These forms of love are not identical. One belongs to mythological marriage, another to ecstatic divine romance and another to bhakti devotion. Yet the poem places them together, emphasising not difference but abundance.
The phrase “sixteen thousand eight girlfriends” pushes this abundance towards exaggeration. Krishna becomes almost impossible to possess exclusively. He belongs to too many people and too many emotional traditions.
The poem then extends friendship to children and girls as well. Krishna’s relational world appears limitless. He can be son, lover, friend and divine companion at the same time. This is where the repeated question acquires special force. If Krishna already belongs to so many modes of relationship, what kind of love remains available to the speaker? Should she approach him maternally, romantically, devotionally, philosophically or as a friend?
The poem does not provide a single answer. Instead, it turns Krishna’s traditional multiplicity into a modern problem of personal choice. The speaker’s difficulty is not caused by lack of knowledge. On the contrary, it is caused by too much cultural knowledge. She knows the many stories and symbolic roles associated with Krishna, and precisely because she knows them, she cannot easily accept one as final.
Krishna in Nature, Music and Contradiction
The middle portion of the poem moves away from human relationships and begins to imagine Krishna through natural, artistic and symbolic forms. He may be loved “as the breeze, moving” or “as the mind, still”. These two images immediately introduce a paradox. Breeze signifies motion and invisible presence, while the still mind suggests silence, contemplation and inward awareness. Krishna therefore appears as both movement and stillness.
The peacock’s plume is one of the most familiar visual symbols associated with Krishna. It suggests beauty, colour, playfulness and grace. “Sweet sound” evokes music and especially the flute traditionally associated with Krishna. The poem thus moves from visual symbol to auditory experience.
Krishna is not only represented through mythological personality but through sensation itself. The image of the leaf floating upon the deluge expands the poem into the cosmic. A tiny leaf survives upon an enormous flood, suggesting the divine child associated with cosmic dissolution. The contrast between the fragile leaf and the vast deluge captures one of the central paradoxes of Krishna tradition: the divine can appear simultaneously vulnerable and immeasurably powerful.
Immediately afterwards, however, the poem returns from cosmic imagery to the ordinary world of “butter” and the “milk pail”. These are associated with the playful childhood Krishna of pastoral mythology. The movement from deluge to butter is significant. Krishna can belong equally to cosmic destruction and domestic mischief. This capacity to contain extremes is central to the poem.
The speaker then considers Krishna “as the poet, with song flowing”. Poetry itself becomes another possible form of Krishna. The poet and the divine merge through song. This also introduces a self-reflexive dimension because Savithri Rajeevan’s own poem becomes part of the very act it describes. If Krishna can be approached through song, then the poem itself may constitute one mode of loving him.
Yet the speaker still asks, “Which way should I love him?” The question implies that even poetry cannot fully solve the problem. The next sequence intensifies the paradoxes. Krishna may be loved “as a foe, valiant” or “as a friend, chariot-borne”. The enemy and the friend occupy opposite positions, but both can define a relationship with Krishna. The “chariot-borne” friend evokes Krishna as Arjuna’s charioteer and counsellor, recalling his role as guide and philosophical teacher.
The poem then places “devotion” beside “detachment”. These two concepts might appear contradictory because devotion implies emotional attachment while detachment requires freedom from attachment. Yet Krishna seems to accommodate both.
Likewise, “sculpture” and “stone” raise the question of representation. A sculpture may be sacred and aesthetically shaped, yet materially it is stone. The line subtly asks whether the object of devotion lies in the divine form, the artistic representation or the material substance itself.
“Night” and “moon’s riverbed” move the poem into lyrical imagery, while “fear” and “shade” offer yet another pair of possibilities. Krishna may be experienced through awe or through protection. He can terrify and comfort.
The cuckoo becomes “the source of song”, continuing the poem’s recurring association between Krishna and music. The question therefore changes from “Which way” to “By which tune should I love him?” Love has become musical. There are many possible tunes just as there are many possible relationships.
This succession of metaphors creates an important critical effect. The poem does not reject traditional Krishna symbolism. Instead, it demonstrates that tradition itself already contains enormous plurality. Krishna can be everything from a household child to a cosmic presence, from lover to enemy, from music to stone. The speaker’s problem is therefore not that tradition offers too little but that it offers too much.
Beauty, Curse and the Questioning of Devotion
In the final descriptive movement, the poem returns to familiar Krishna iconography. Krishna has “cloud shade on the skin”, “yellow clothing the body” and a “lotus petal in the eye”. These images create the conventional visual beauty associated with Krishna.
The “cloud shade” evokes his dark complexion, while yellow clothing recalls traditional depictions of him. The lotus-petal eye suggests beauty, softness and divinity. The line “love in the mind” appears to condense everything that has come before. Love seems to be the essence associated with Krishna.
Yet the poem immediately complicates this idealisation with “curse on the head—”. The word “curse” breaks the serene sequence of beauty and love. Krishna’s mythological world includes not only charm, love and divine play but also conflict, fate, violence and mortality. The poem therefore refuses sentimental perfection.
The next question, “Which arrow should I love him by?”, is deliberately unusual. The earlier metaphors of “way” and “tune” are now replaced by the arrow. The arrow may suggest direction, penetration, fate, violence or the weapon associated with Krishna’s mortal end in later mythological tradition. Love is no longer imagined only as tenderness; it may also involve pain.
This progression is important. The poem begins with relationships of nurture and affection, expands into music and beauty and eventually admits fear, curse and violence. Krishna is not presented as a simple embodiment of sweetness. His multiplicity includes contradiction. The speaker therefore continues to resist any easy devotional formula.
From “How Should I Love Him?” to “Why Should I Love Him?”
The final turn of the poem changes everything. For most of the poem, the speaker assumes that Krishna is to be loved. The only uncertainty concerns method. Should he be loved as child, friend, lover, song, breeze, sculpture, fear or beauty? The final line changes the question to “why should I love him?” This movement from “how” to “why” is the philosophical centre of the poem.
“How” accepts the obligation of devotion and asks only about its appropriate form. “Why” refuses to accept even that obligation without examination. The speaker therefore moves from inherited devotion towards individual inquiry.
This does not necessarily mean that she rejects Krishna or denies the value of devotion. The poem remains deeply engaged with Krishna’s imagery and mythology. Its knowledge of the tradition is intimate and affectionate. But intimacy does not prevent questioning.
The final question insists that love cannot simply be inherited as a cultural command. It must be personally meaningful. This gives the poem a distinctly modern sensibility. The speaker stands within tradition but also outside it sufficiently to examine it.
She knows the myths, names, images and devotional possibilities, yet she retains the right to ask why any of them should demand her love. The ending is therefore open rather than dismissive. Krishna remains present, but certainty disappears.
Myth, Irony and a Modern Devotional Consciousness
One of the poem’s most distinctive qualities is its combination of devotional material with irony and intellectual distance. Krishna is surrounded by familiar mythological figures and symbols, but the language often refuses solemnity. The phrase “sixteen thousand eight girlfriends” is the clearest example. It converts a conventional mythological number into contemporary conversational language. This shift in register allows the speaker to look freshly at material that might otherwise be repeated reverentially.
The poem is therefore not anti-mythological. It uses mythology actively but refuses to treat inherited stories as unquestionable. The repetition of “Krishna—how should I love him?” provides formal unity. Each stanza offers another set of possibilities, but instead of resolving the question, each set makes Krishna more difficult to define.
The structure is cumulative. Mothers lead to fathers, fathers to lovers, lovers to nature, nature to music, music to philosophical concepts and finally to the question of devotion itself. The poem therefore moves from mythology towards philosophy.
Its imagery also creates a remarkable range. Domestic objects such as butter and milk pails appear beside cosmic deluge. The peacock feather stands beside fear. The lotus eye stands beside curse. Stone stands beside song.
This juxtaposition is not accidental. It reflects the central idea that Krishna is culturally constructed through many contradictory images. The poem neither attempts to harmonise all these contradictions nor chooses one image as superior. Instead, it makes contradiction itself part of Krishna’s identity.
Love, Freedom and the Individual Voice
The deeper concern of the poem is not only Krishna but the speaker’s freedom to determine the nature of her relationship with him. The repeated question “how should I love him?” reveals that the speaker is being confronted by numerous culturally available models of devotion. She could love Krishna as mother, lover, friend, devotee, poet or worshipper. She could approach him through nature, art, music, image or philosophy.
But none of these possibilities automatically becomes her own. The final “why” asserts the autonomy of the individual consciousness. This makes the poem more than a catalogue of Krishna myths. It becomes an enquiry into how inherited cultural symbols continue to operate within a modern self.
The speaker does not destroy tradition; she negotiates with it. Krishna remains immensely attractive precisely because he can take so many forms. But the speaker refuses to let that attractiveness become unquestioned obligation. The poem therefore balances fascination and scepticism. It recognises the beauty of Krishna imagery while also questioning the assumptions behind devotional certainty.
The Poem’s Central Achievement
Krishna is ultimately a poem about multiplicity and the difficulty of choosing a personal response to inherited divinity. Krishna appears through mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, enemies, nature, music, art, fear, beauty, curse and memory. Every attempt to define him creates another version.
The repeated question therefore becomes increasingly philosophical. At first, the speaker seems to ask which devotional tradition she should adopt. By the end, she asks whether the expectation of devotion itself should be accepted.
The poem’s most important movement is consequently from plural forms of love to freedom of questioning. Krishna remains culturally immense and symbolically inexhaustible, but the speaker claims the right to decide what that presence means for her. The poem neither ends with faith nor with rejection. It ends with inquiry. That open-endedness is essential.
Savithri Rajeevan presents a Krishna who cannot be reduced to one myth, one relationship or one emotional register. At the same time, she presents a speaker who cannot be reduced to the role of unquestioning devotee. The repeated “Krishna—” draws the deity close, while the repeated questions preserve critical distance. The poem’s power lies precisely in that tension between nearness and uncertainty, attraction and scepticism, cultural inheritance and individual choice. What begins as a search for the correct way to love Krishna ultimately becomes a defence of the right to ask whether love itself must be commanded.
