Storytelling: The Bumbling God

The Bumbling God

And so it had been prophesied that the great king Kamsa would be laid low by the eighth child of his sister. Fearful of this prophecy, the great king had his sister and her husband imprisoned and each time she would bear a child, he would come into the room, take it from her and her husband, and kill it by smashing it against the cell wall. This continued many times over many years with his sister mourning in agony each time her child was taken from her.

            Finally, the time came when her eighth child was to be born. It was late at night and Kamsa was sleeping in his bed while the child came into the world. When the child was born, his mother and father looked him over and were forlorn for he was deformed and frail. His skin was fragile and tore easily, one of his legs was longer than the other, and his eyes were filled with thick clouds. They mourned for their poor child and his frailness. His mother named him Krishna.

            In the morning, Kamsa was informed by his men that the eighth child (the one that he had been warned of) had been born and so he went into the cell to finally kill this child and thus give himself immortality, but what he found did not frighten him. Instead, he was humored by what he found. “This child will never harm me. This child could never harm anyone except by accident perhaps. It will be lucky to survive a month on its own, It is sickly to look at. It poses no threat to me or anyone” he said and left laughing, feeling that the prophecy must have been wrong. There was no way such a weak and deformed child was going to pose any threat to him.

            After several days passed, Kamsa decided to free his sister and her husband, letting them return to their homes. “You pose no threat to me anymore” he said, sending them away from his palace with nothing but the clothes they wore. They wandered for most of the day, crossing a great bridge to reach a small village on the other side. There, they stopped and rested for the night.

            That very night, though, Kamsa had a nightmare that a great horror had befallen him and ended his life. He woke up terrified and called his soldiers, sending them forth into the nearby villages to slaughter the children that lived there. The child had to die. He had made a mistake. And so his soldiers went forth, killing hundreds of babies, but they did not go far enough to reach the village where the baby Krishna was hidden. It was too late and he had slipped through the king's mighty grasp.

            Kamsa felt tentatively safe, assuming the child had been found and killed, but he was never certain and for many months, he slept nervously, afraid of what he didn’t know. He had always known to trust the prophecies and he cursed himself for not simply killing the child when he had had the chance to do so. Now, there was no way to be certain if the child was still alive. He ordered his soldiers to search for his sister and her husband, but no matter how hard they looked, they could not find the couple or the child. Kamsa was left in a state of constant worry, unsure of what to do in order to try to save his life. He summoned mercenaries and demons alike and offered them great wealth if they could find his sister and her husband and slay the child that was with them. They all accepted and spread out across the countryside to hunt down the child.

Authors note: So I tried something new with this. I decided to write a story that’s going to be a part of a series. I will continue this story for the next few weeks. The idea here is that Krishna will grow up through the stories and survive constant deadly trials purely out of luck. He will be a bit of a bumbling and sickly idiot who is somehow saved through pure luck. The story isn't really laced with humor which I had originally intended. In fact, it's kind of dark and it's an interesting take on the constant role of divinity in these tales. I decided to turn it all on its head and have an important character who is only saved through constant luck. Krishna in this tale isn't powerful or imposing to look at. In this story, he's frail and sickly and it's a wonder he hasn't died of natural causes on his own yet let alone died from the people and things intentionally out to get him. This kind of fits in with the other absurd pieces I've put in my portfolio and I've been adding another chapter to this story every week since I wrote this piece so stay tuned and check out the future pieces.

Bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna's great escape, wikimedia commons)

Reading Notes Week 9: Epified Krishna Part B

So I’ve continued on with the story of Krishna as done by Epified. It’s a really interesting series and not one that I probably would have found without this class to lead me to it. I first tried the Epified series with the Epified version of the Mahabharata and though at first, I said that the material doesn’t really go into enough depth, I think I’ve come to a more complete conclusion on that. So even though these are very short and don’t give a ton of detail, you can’t really judge them on that scale because they’re not setting out to do that in the first place. They set out to give a cursory overview of the material they’re working with and they do that very well. In some ways, I find the story of Krishna far more interesting just because it’s not as varied and it doesn’t bounce around as much. Personally I felt that the Mahabharta in both the written form and in the Epified version really just bounces around far too much and it makes it very hard to really follow the narrative arcs because there’s constantly new characters and new people being talked about. Now with this story, the narrative is much more focused and targeted around one person and I think this works much better for the Epified format. Instead of telling a bunch of one to three minute stories that only have small connections between them at times, all these stories are very strongly connected. It also feels like the stakes feel higher. From the very beginning of the piece, things have been extremely intense and tumultuous. It really holds the viewer in very well. Finally, I appreciate that the narrators actually have Indian accents because it adds a certain strong cultural tone it that really works well for the piece.

Bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna Statue, wikimedia commons)

Reading notes Week 9: Epified Krishna Part A

I chose to go with the Epified version of Krishna. I made this decision because I really enjoyed the Epified version of the Mahabharta and though I still feel that they don’t give you a ton of information to work with, they do a pretty good job of giving you a basic overview of the material you’re working with. It’s not ideal but it works for the format they’ve chosen. I really do appreciate this kind of format and it makes we wish I had some more artistic skills so that I could pull something off like this. The white board animation is really interesting and it’s even more interesting when you consider that they’re making sure the timeline of the narrations fits the drawn components and I wonder if they speed up or slow down certain drawings in order to fit the narration constraints rather than vice-versa. It certainly seems like that would be the easier of the two options. I guess the other option would just be creating the narration after you’ve done the drawing – so for example, you know it takes three minutes to play the video of the drawing and so you just constrain the narration you write into that three minute block. Either way, it’s an extremely effective and interesting way of presenting material. Even though it’s not the most in-depth, it’s a great way to give outsiders a brief glimpse into the material without being too intensive. I do sometimes struggle to hear all the names they say and this is one area where the written version of the stories really win out. It’s hard to tell who is being described at times unless you’re familiar with many of the names already. Due to my cultural difference, it’s taken a bit longer to catch onto the various names and places.

Bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna statue, wikimedia commons)