Geeta Govindam

Published: 25th November 2025

Category: Relationships


"Out of the mouths of babes, comes the truth." - Matthew [21:16]

Raising kids is tough. Answering their questions without lying is even tougher, especially on topics that can change their worldview on ethics and morality, without them realizing it. So when my daughter visited a Krishna temple next to our house and started asking questions



I was stumped for an answer.

I looked at my wife desperately for help, but as usual got zilch in return. She is an atheist and has always been opposed to me reading out stories from Amar Chitra Katha.

Perplexed, I did what any father would do when cornered with such questions; search for an icecream parlour. At the nearest Starbucks, after a combo meal of a hot chocolate, a cookie, and a toy, my daughter forgot all about Krishna’s questionable moral compass.

Over the weekend, against my better judgment, we decided to watch "Bajirao Mastani." The movie felt like a commercial for Mohey and Manyavar, with the director treating history the way the mangy cat in my society treats my motorcycle seat; clawed, scratched, and reshaped to personal taste.

But the highlight for me was the same confounding question asked by the Peshwa queen Kashibai. Why is Radha’s name always joined with Krishna, and not his legitimate wife, Rukmini?

It felt like deja vu; a question confronting me again and again. Over the next few months I spent some time genuinely trying to understand why is this so?

I read through books and summaries of “Yugandhar”, “Krishna Kinaara”, and BORI version of The Mahabharatha, and watched old TV serials in my spare time. Most of them described it as "Cosmic intervention," "Spiritual love," or the idea that Krishna wanted Radha to learn true love; a rather fancy way of saying, "I don’t know."

Strangely some of the earlier texts dont even have a character called “Radha”. There is also a version that claims her husband Ayan is another avatar of Krishna. (How desperate can one be to give a happy ending to one of India’s greatest tragic love stories?)

I found most of it hard to digest. But then, another thought struck me. If Sanjay Leela Bhansali can twist and come up with his own version of history with silk and chiffon, why can't we come up with a version of the story which is right logically, and historically (or should i say mythologically)?

Divinity is a difficult concept to grasp, too complex and open ended. So I decided to think of all characters of this love triangle as humans, build a character sketch of each one and come up with a more plausible explanation to this question.

Heres hoping that I fare better than Bhansali.

In my head, Krishna wasn’t a god at all. Just a sharp Yadava boy trying to survive and stay noticed. Charming, but also calculative in a way that made people both love him and watch their back around him.

He was the second born and dark-skinned, something which his elder, handsome and well-built brother Balarama and his other friends never let him forget. "Second born - second best" was a phrase that he heard a lot.

He learned quickly that he needed to grab attention and understood that charm was a form of currency. He watched people in power twist others by appealing to their emotions and realised instinctively that he could do it better.

Since then every social interaction became an experiment as he honed his skills in terms of influencing others and getting them to dance to his tunes. He watched how people moved and spoke, how they reacted. He picked up things about them and tucked them away, useful for later as leverage.

He used emotions as tools and wielded them better than people who were older than him. But to be clear here, he was no villain. His kindness and compassion were both real, but so was his opportunism.

It was at this time that he meets Radha, a woman whose world was built on compromises. Her marriage was sensible, stable but emotionally barren. Krishna was ike sunlight pouring into a room that had been shut for years.

Her routine, predictable life made his charm irresistable. His natural ability to make everyone around him feel special, creates an atmosphere of ease and happiness. He would have made her feel seen and heard. Radha finds someone different from her mundane life, someone with whom she can be herself and also confide. With Krishna, she could drop the “good wife”act. No pretending. Just breathing normally for once. She falls in love with him knowing fully well that it will not lead to frutition. They share a happy few years together but the end of their relationship comes sooner than expected.

The truth about who Krishna really was came out, and suddenly the boy Radha knew was expected to be someone else entirely. He naturally changes and is drawn towards power. He feels that he is destined to be much more. Nandgaon becomes too small for him and Radha is now an inconvenience.

The relation with Radha is a stumbling block on many accounts. There are social stigmas attached to loving a married woman, not to mention someone elder to him. His love will never acquire legitimacy.

Radha in turn also understood his dilemma. She never asked him to stay. She was mature enough to understand what a young man should chase. Both acknowledge each other as their first true love but also know that its a relationship of comfort and has no future.

Krishna not only leaves behind Radha, but also his flute, his playfulness, the whole of his former self. His new world was all about growth, ambition, strategy and secrecy; a place where Radha’s simplicity will not fit in.

And then there was Rukmini.

Rukmini was different. Polished. Controlled. She’d grown up knowing the whole world watched her every move. She carried herself like someone who has been preparing to rule since childhood. Her smile was measured and her words well-weighed before she spoke them. She understood the role of marriages in royal families and importance of alliance building which happens through such marriages.

Vidarbha was culturally rich, but militarily weak. To secure protection, the king planned an alliance with Shishupal of Chedi, a powerful ruler with a reputation for cruelty and arrogance. Rukmini understood the political need, but she refused to marry a man she could neither respect nor live with.

She had meanwhile noted the rising influence of Krishna among the Yaduvanshis. News of his exploits had reached far and wide and his ability to marshall Yaduvanshis as one of the strongest military forces, had reached her. She therefore wrote to him a letter declaring her love for him and imploring him to rescue her from the marriage to Shishupal, which Krishna did.

In such a sense Rukmini knew that a kingdom whose military strength was in decline needs a certain type of man with qualities necessary to rebuild it. Krishna fit the bill perfectly.

Krishna married her for the similar reasons. She brought legitimacy, alliances, and a political shield. She steadied him in a tumoultous environment. They did fall in love, eventually, in that slow, practical way that real life demands but not the kind, poets write about.

In a loose sense, Radha represents everything Krishna had to leave behind to become what he became. Rukmini began as a political alliance and grows into a dependable partner in statecraft; steady, loyal, and faithful, yet unable to offer the emotional depth or innocence of Krishna’s first love.

Krishna tries his best to erase that past by never returning to Nandgaon and by shedding every trace of his early life, but memories are stubborn, and legends even more so. His marriage to Rukmini, though ideal in many ways, was born of strategy. Though Rukmini built his empire, it was Radha who built his myth. And so, while Radha barely appears in historical or scriptural records, she still eclipses all others in the world’s imagination.

It’s safe to say that we as humans are trapped in a tragic paradox. For us, perfect marriages and love rooted in stability are neither captivating nor intoxicating as they create great households, not great stories. It’s broken love that becomes legend, because its love and longing which drives poets, singers, sculptors, and everyone else who has tasted love and loss.

We worship not the life we have, but the love that we lose.

Radha stands next to Krishna not as historical truth but as eternal longing. We sing “Radhey-Krishna” instead of “Rukmini-Krishna” and celebrate Radha because she represents, the love we all yearn for, not the life we finally settle into.



“The saddest thing is to be a minute to someone when you have made them your eternity”

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