Go to :  Index File

Dancing women celebrate Radha's divinity in a unique way

     Mukhrai (Mathura): In an extremely rare and unique tradition, women in tiny Mukhrai village in Mathura, believed to be the hometown of Radha, consort of the mythical God-king Krishna, celebrated her birthday by dancing with a massive pyramid of burning lamps atop their head. The legend recreates the joy and frenzy of Radha's birth, believed to be in the month of March, signifying the advent of spring and villagers every year appoint a day after Holi, the festival of colours, for the celebrations. According to legend, Radha's maternal grandmother, overjoyed with the beautiful girl's birth, ran out of the house with the "charkula" or a chariot wheel, after which the dance is named, on her head to make the announcement and danced madly for hours.

   The tradition has since struck and each year the entire village begins the preparations from dawn itself, when one or sometimes two of the village women chosen for the dance are dressed in bridal finery and the men prepare the pyramid. "This is the birthplace of queen Radha. When Radha was born, her maternal grandmother was so overjoyed that she picked up an extremely heavy chariot wheel and starting dancing much to everyone's amazement at her sudden almost divine powers. Since then a tradition has been set and we recreate it every year," said Madan Lal Sharma, a village elder. The dance itself is anything but easy as the circular pyramid weighs over 55 kilograms and how the frail and tiny village women manage to carry the weight and dance for hours, has puzzled tourists and locals. The women, who train from childhood, say they get divine power while dancing, which makes them forget the massive weight. The tradition is carried on as a family heirloom with mothers passing it on to their daughters and daughter-in-laws. "My daugther-in-law will take this tradition forward. I am teaching it to some of the other village women as well," said Jamuna Devi, a fire dancer. Radha, in Hindu mythology, is the consort of Lord Krishna, one of most revered Hindu deities who enumerated the Bhagwad Gita, the treatise of Hindu philosophy. Tales of their love are depicted pictorially in Indian architecture and paintings and their relationship is often interpreted as the quest for union with the divine. Krishna's relationship with Radha, his favorite among the 'gopis' (cow-herding maidens), has served as a model for male and female love in a variety of art forms, and since the sixteenth century appears prominently as a motif in North Indian paintings.

    The allegorical love of Radha has found expression in some great Bengali poetical works of Govinda Das, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and Jayadeva the author of Geet Govinda. Krishna's youthful dalliances with the 'gopis' are interpreted as symbolic of the loving interplay between God and the human soul. Radha's utterly rapturous love for Krishna and their relationship is often interpreted as the quest for union with the divine. This kind of love is of the highest form of devotion in Vaishnavism, and is symbolically represented as the bond between the wife and husband or beloved and lover. Since childhood they were close to each other - they played, they danced, they fought, they grew up together and wanted to be together forever, but the world pulled them apart. He departed to safeguard the virtues of truth, and she waited for him. He vanquished his enemies, became the king, and came to be worshipped as a lord of the universe. She waited for him. He married Rukmini and Satyabhama, raised a family, fought the great war of Ayodhya, and she still waited. So great was Radha's love for Krishna that even today her name is uttered whenever Krishna is refered to, and Krishna worship is though to be incomplete without the deification of Radha.
-Mar 29, 2005