Rukmini - Blog Posts

Krishna and Rukmini for the Compass Rose meme. Thanks.😄

North

first encounter | (turnabout is) fair play | fool’s gold | forbidden fruit | the female of the species is more deadly than the male

They watch her, eyes glittering with greed, and anger tightens Rukmini’s throat once more: to this crowd of shameless men, she is no more than a prize, a possession that their friend has already claimed.

She forces herself to smile.

Let them look; they will never have more than this illusion of her, docile and demure. They are fools, each and every one of them, and treasure knows better than to stay in their hands.

South

(cold) comfort | confession | cloak and dagger |  crocodile tears | charmed life

Perhaps it is a tad dramatic to send a secret letter.

Rukmini cannot bring herself to regret it, though: always she has been wise Rukmini, prudent Rukmini, Rukmini to whom all answers are known. Some might suppose it was only that she craved some excitement in her life; so, at least, her brother supposes in her fury.

But in truth, she has as much of a taste for intrigue as her husband — and when one feels so, when one fights for her very life, who would not expect wise and prudent Rukmini to plot and scheme?

East

stars | songs and stories | (politics/misery makes for) strange bedfellows | silver lining | sea change

Someday, Rukmini knows, Dwaraka will return to the sea. She does not regret this: her kingdom, though beautiful, is but borrowed from the ocean, and outsiders may not enjoy his bounty for long.

No, what she dreads is that Dwaraka dares not abandon its duty while Krishna lives, but he cannot do so forever. Someday, Rukmini knows, Krishna must return to the heavens from which he came—and that day shall be her last on this earth.

West

just in time | joined at the hip | jam tomorrow | juvenile | journey’s end

Her heart stops a dozen times, once for every step that leads down the Devi temple. She feels alone, flanked though she is by waiting-women—at least until she hears the thunder of trotting horses.

A hand takes hers, and tugs her into the chariot; Rukmini laughs in delight.

“I trust,” says Krishna, “that I am not too late.”

“Not at all,” Rukmini replies, in every bit as excessively solemn a tone. “You are just in time.”

They beam at each other.

hindu mythology meme: princess rukmini

 She loved the Lord. She loved Him due to the letters she exchanged with Him, the mighty whispers she heard about His greatness, the overwhelming loyalty she gave to Him. So, she loved the Lord and He loved her. 

Alphabet Fic Challenge, C for Correspondence, Krishna/Rukmini

That first letter she writes because it is the right thing to do: because she can no longer tolerate sitting in silence at her brother’s side, hearing of him brag of the blows he has dealt a poor paltry kingdom that’s only just recovered from almost twenty-five years of tyranny. As Rukmini sees it, the Yadavas’ only crime is to have offended Jarasandha; and given what she knows of the man, she thinks she could do with offending.

Her tutor delivers the letter, after having been coaxed and cajoled and finally tricked into conceding that it is unrighteous to defy the Magadhan Emperor’s wickedness in whatever way possible; and when he returns with the answer, skeptical but gracious, Rukmini assumes that will be the end of it.

The Yadavas fight back the invasion barely, she gathers from Rukmi’s rants, and she looks down to hide her smile. What she doesn’t expect is to hear from

That night, she takes out her pen and paper again, frowning over the construction of a new code. Rukmi might have been her brother once, she knows, but now he is nothing but Jarasandha’s puppet; at times she wonders if it’s to avenge the loss of the loving, smiling, kind boy she once knew that she acts so recklessly against Magadha’s decrees. But even that excuse will mean nothing if she is caught, which she won’t be. She is cleverer than that.

She writes, and receives a rather more grateful reply: a gift, she supposes, from the low-level official her messenger had found to accept it. She dares not dream it might so received even by a high-ranking minister instead; Sunanda is a good man, and wise too, but no royal house, even one so humble as that of Mathura, welcomes strangers to its door.

Sixteen times in total the forces of Magadha attack, and sixteen times they are rebuffed. She cannot recall when she starts writing even without the excuse of imminent threat; but the replies are kind, and dryly funny, and genuinely interested in her thoughts and opinions. Rukmini cannot remember the last time anyone was interested in her thoughts and opinions, not since her brother decreed that it was unseemly for a princess to deal in wealth and confiscated her account books, but now—

Well. A low-level official might not be able to change much about his country, but he can certainly listen to her thoughts on how an economy ought to be run.

By the seventeenth time she overhears the plan for invasion, it is almost so as easy as to be child’s play: the armies will be roused months later, the formations they mean to make laid out in painstaking detail. It’s only after she sends her letter that she realizes what she should have seen before: it was too easy. A trap, then, to see how the Yadavas had always had prior warning for all Jarasandha’s advances; a trap she was careless enough to stumble into. And for the people of Mathura, a way of luring them into a false sense of security before an army presented itself at their gates, weeks early. They would have no resource but to surrender.

She watches Sunanda leave from her window, aghast, and knows it is too late.

Rukmini has no choice. She kneels before Goddess Parvati and prays desperately that her—correspondent? No, not only that; her….friend? Not quite. Oh, that whoever has been reading and receiving her correspondence is shrewd enough to realize what she has herself. She thinks he will. She hopes he will. Over the years she has fancied that while his face might be unknown, his mind is akin to hers; she cannot have that trust shattered now.

When Sunanda returns, he reports: “He instructed me to assure you the populace would be evacuated from the city by a week’s time.”

She sags with relief, and then, for the first time, is curious enough to ask: “Who says so?”

Sunanda is clearly surprised, and why should he not be? What sort of princess would write so shamelessly to a stranger without ascertaining his identity first? “Why, Vasudev’s son Krishna, of course.”

“The prince himself? Surely you can’t mean— surely he must only have heard—”

“It was he who greeted me since the first time,” Sunanda assures her. “He has always been most kind.”

Her brother might sneer that it is the cowherd in him, to investigate visitors himself, but to Rukmini it seems nothing less than the sort of rare courtesy that ought always to be respected. She smiles to herself, and blushes when she catches herself.

“Thank you,” she says hurriedly. “Please do allow yourself some rest, Teacher.”

Letters mean nothing, she knows; and certainly, the most she could hope for on his part was appreciation for her efforts. But still—when Jarasandha roars with rage to find his quarry has escaped, and when his beady eyes fall upon her; when Rukmi talks excitedly of how the Emperor means to betroth his beloved protege to his dear friend’s sister; when the noose tightens around her neck, and a lifetime as the Queen of Chedi means an end to all her freedom, there is only one place Rukmini looks to for escape.

Rukmini

And perhaps what made her beautiful

was not her appearance

or what she achieved

but in her love,

and in her courage,

and her audacity to believe,

~ Morgan Nichols