Category: Featured Works

“Despite having scores of servants and attendants, Mother Yashoda would seize every opportunity to render personal service (seva) to her dear son, Krishna.” As per Puranic texts, Yashoda was the wife of Nanda and the foster-mother to Krishna. Lord Krishna was born to Devaki and was given to Yashoda and Nanda in Gokul by Krishna’s father Vasudeva on the night of His birth, for His protection from Devaki’s brother, the king of Mathura, Kamsa. Yashoda’s deep affection for Krishna is the highest manifestation of ‘Vatsalya Prema’ (parental love) and even ‘Vatsalya Bhakti’ (parental devotion).

Material body of living being is often likened with a cage and soul of a living being is likened with a bird. Just as a bird is trapped in a cage likewise soul is trapped in the body.

Through this analogy it is conveyed that once the bird (soul) leaves the cage (body) (after death) and remains in the same room (material world), it would keep getting trapped in one cage or the other. The cage (body) or cage-type (specie) will change but the bird will remain trapped in a cage (material body). Puranik scriptures recommended that the living-entity should break open the window of the material world and enter the world-beyond which signifies eternal realm or spiritual world. After attaining that spiritual world one does not have to return in this material world and one is freed from repeated cycle of birth and death.

In Bhagavad-gita the bona-fide method of getting rid of repeated life and death is explained in detail.

janma karma ca me divyam evam yo vetti tattvatah tyaktva deham punar janma naiti mam eti so ‘rjuna (One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna) (Bhagvad-gita 4.9)

This painting is portraying the following verse of Bhagavadgita dehino ‘smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyati (BG 2:13) (As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change)

Every material entity is suffering in the grind of Life and Time.

Any man who has perfect knowledge of the constitution of the individual soul, the Supersoul, and nature – both material and spiritual – is called a dhīra, or a most sober man. Such a man is never deluded by the change of bodies.

This painting portrays the following three verses of Bhagavad-gita

1. “indriyani parany ahur indriyebhyah param manah manasas tu para buddhir yo buddheh paratas tu sah”
   (The working senses are superior to dull matter; mind is higher than the senses; intelligence is still higher than the mind; and he (the soul) is even higher than the intelligence.) (Bhagavad-gita 3.42)
   The Shloka implies that the senses should be controlled by mind, mind should be controlled by intelligence under the direction of soul.
2. upadrastanumanta ca bharta bhokta mahesvarah paramatmeti capy ukto dehe ‘smin purusah parah
   (Yet in this body there is another, a transcendental enjoyer who is the Lord, the supreme proprietor, who exists as the overseer and permitter, and who is known as the Super-soul.) (Bhagavad-gita 13:23)
   This verse states that within the heart of a living being, the Supreme Personality of Godhead resides as the Super-soul. The Super-soul rests beside the individual soul and acts as a witness.
3. ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā madhye tiṣṭhanti rājasāḥ jaghanya-guṇa-vṛtti-sthā adho gacchanti tāmasāḥ
   (Those situated in the mode of goodness or sattva gradually go upward to the higher planets; those in the mode of passion or rajas live on the earthly planets; and those in the mode of ignorance or tamas go down to the hellish worlds.) (Bhagavad-gita 14:18)

In this painting through the analogy of puppet, five senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin) are portrayed. The cords attached to the senses represent mind. the pair of hands controlling the cords represents intelligence and the pair of hands at the top giving directions represents individual soul.

As per the epic Mahabharata, the Pandava prince Arjuna and his brothers fought against their cousins, the Kauravas. In the battlefield of Kurukshetra, faced with moral crisis whether or not to fight against his own relatives and kill them for dharma (duty), Arjuna shared his reluctance to fight his near and dear ones with Lord Krishna, his charioteer, Who preached him about eternal and non-perishable nature of soul and revealed his virat-roop as a theophany , by endowing Arjuna with divine vision so that he was able to see the Cosmic form of the Supreme Being.

The Bhagavad-Gita or Gitopadesh is the timeless sermon given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the battlefield of Kurukshetra when Arjuna, just before the commencement of war with Kauravas, developed moral conflicts within himself, realising the futility of war with his own family members. After submitting before Krishna many noble and moral reasons why he wished not to fight, Arjuna cast his weapons aside, overwhelmed with grief.

Arjuna asked Krishna for guidance and became His disciple. Lord Krishna took up the role of Arjuna’s Spiritual Master and enlightened Arjuna about Jivatama (the living entity), Prakriti (material nature), Kala (time), Karma (activity) and Ishwara (God) and revealed His Divine Cosmic form to Arjuna who then completely surrendered himself to Lord Krishna and got ready to fight, having conquered his inner turmoil.

Everyone within the material world is suffering from the repeated birth and death. Bhagavad-gita provides the real cure to this suffering i.e. release from the cycle of birth and death.

During the episode of Shishupala-vadha, when Krishna’s finger got hurt by Sudarshan Chakra, Draupadi had torn off a part of her sari to tie the piece of cloth on his bleeding finger. A grateful Krishna promised to Draupadi that He would return the favour at an appropriate moment.

Later on, when Yudhishthir lost his four brothers and Draupadi to Duryodhana in a game of dice and Duhshasan dragged a wailing Draupadi to the Royal Court and started disrobing her, Krishna in response to Draupadi’s prayer, came to her rescue and made her saree seemingly endless which caused Duhshasan to give up out of sheer fatigue. Thus Lord Krishna, the ultimate saviour, saved Draupadi’s dignity.