V for Virtual Love

Virtual love…very common these days, you’d say! But did you know virtual love existed in the days of the Mahabharata too…Don’t you believe me? Read on then…!

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Sage Durvasa was leaving Bhojpur after the ‘Maha Yagna’. Kunti bowed before him to seek his blessings.

“I am very pleased Kunti,” said the sage known for his mercurial temper, “You have looked after me very well. Here is a mantra which I want to give you,” he said, whispering a divine chant in her ear. “Whichever supreme power you think of as you chant this mantra, he will appear before you in human form and fulfill your desire like a slave. He will fill your womb with a progeny as refulgent as himself,” he said blessing her.

Kunti beamed with happiness. It was such an exciting proposition!

As she went to sleep her mind was full of curiosity. Would the sage's blessing indeed work? Whom would she invoke? Who were the most powerful among Gods?  The entire night she tossed and turned in bed without a proper answer.

Morning brought with it the first rays of the magnificent sun. As the golden rays streamed in through her window and fell on her eyes, she opened them dreamily.

“Pranam Suryadev,” she said bowing to offer her first prayer of the day to the sun god. 

“Blessings Kunti...,” She heard a voice. Was the voice in her head or did she hear it aloud?

“Surya dev was it you? Or am I dreaming?”

Suryadev laughed. “It is indeed me Kunti.”

Suddenly she was excited. Could she really talk to the sun god? She skipped out of bed and pranced across to the garden in the eastern most corner of the kingdom. She stood under the fragrant champa tree and looked at the cool ball of orange in the sky.

It must amazing to look down upon the whole world from above, she thought, looking at the sun.

“It is indeed wonderful.”

So the sun god was indeed talking to her! Oh! This was exciting!

“Tell me what you can see Suryadev.”

He regaled her with his descriptions of the planets and the stars, the rivers and oceans, the hills and valleys, the trees and kingdoms, and everything in between. Before she knew, the sun had turned a fiery yellow and she could bear to look at him no more.

“I know it is difficult to look at me now, Kunti. Come to me when the day turns to evening,” he said.

She waited all day to see him again and time moved at its own slow pace...and then it was evening and she saw the yellow sun turn orange again.

Excited she rushed out to the river bed in the west.

“Suryadev…” she called.

“Yes Kunti.”

She smiled. She had so many things to ask him! They spent the next hour talking about how his presence affected various life forms, how he towered over the entire solar system and so on and so forth. He spoke and she listened, in rapt attention.

Kunti was in high spirits as she lay down in bed that night. It had been an exciting day; she had been conversing with someone she could not even see; at least not in his human form. Would he talk to her again tomorrow?

The next day and for many days after that, whenever Kunti called out to him, he would come, and she would spend hours talking to him, learning about him and telling him about herself.

She was amused when he told her that he had three eyes and four arms.

“What do you do with so many arms?” she had asked him in child-like wonder.

“I hold two water lilies in my upper hands each symbolizing the emission of radiation and god consciousness. I encourage worshippers with the third and bless them with my fourth hand,” he said.

She was intrigued as he described his golden chariot pulled by seven mares.

“Each mare represents the seven chakras in the human body, and they also represent the seven colors of the rainbow,” he had explained.

Every night as she retired to bed, their conversation would repeat themselves in her ear and her fondness for the sun god was quietly reaching its pinnacle.

“You are beautiful, Kunti,” he had told her one evening, “You are also noble, and pure.” She spent that entire evening listen to him extolling her beauty and virtues.

As the days passed, she was filled by an intense desire to see him. Oh! If only I could meet you, she pined. “Can I never meet you Suryadev?

“Well…”

Then suddenly she knew. She had the mantra given to her by sage Durvasa, why not use it to summon Suryadev, she thought.

“Kunti...wait…” warned Suryadev.

But she was sick in love with him and nothing, not even her unmarried status, could stop her from summoning the sun god.

Closing her eyes, she chanted the mantra and Lo! Suryadev appeared before her in all his glory. As he stood before her, she willed him to take her into his arms, and a glorious congress occurred.

Time stood still as they made tender love, soaking each other in the throes of passion and bliss.

What she did not know then, was that as much as she had basked in his love, it would later be the cause of her own misery and unhappiness.

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Suryadev blessed her womb with his progeny, and thus was born the mighty Karna. He sported luminous celestial earrings and a golden armor on his body and was not only the world’s best archer but also the most charitable being every to tread the Earth.

This day..last year..V for Vibgyor