Stop pulling each other’s hair and listen, both of you.

You think Krishna was always floating around with a flute, looking peaceful? Chup. Let me tell you what that boy actually did to his poor mother.

Yashoda was churning curd one morning. Hot already, sweat on her neck, bangles clinking with every pull of the rope. Her braid had come loose and was hanging down her back, thick as a rope itself.

Krishna was supposed to be playing outside. Was he playing outside? No.

He crept up behind her—that boy could move like a cat when he wanted something—and he tied the end of her braid to the leg of the low stool. Quietly. Smiling the whole time, the little mischief-maker.

Then he sat down in front of her, all innocent, and said, “Maiya, sing me the song about the cows.”

Yashoda, tired, not even looking, started to get up to fetch milk. And—dhup!—flat on her back she went, braid yanked tight, curd pot rolling, curd everywhere, all over her good sari.

She didn’t even shout at first. She just lay there a moment, looking at the sky. Then she shouted plenty.

Krishna was already three houses away, laughing so hard he had hiccups, jaggery still stuck to his fingers from yesterday, running like his legs belonged to someone faster. Yashoda chased him with the rope still in her hand, hair half undone, curd in her eyebrows even.

“When I catch you—” she was screaming.

She never caught him. Not that morning.

That evening though, he came home quiet as anything, sat by her feet while she cooked, and rested his sticky head against her knee like nothing had happened at all.

She looked down at him. Still angry, this woman. Still smelling of sour curd. But her hand went into his hair anyway, slow, the way a mother’s hand does when it has already forgiven, even before the mouth has agreed to it.