Radha and Krishna’s eternal, entirely unconventional love story has long captivated the imagination of generations of romantics, inspiring them to search for love in all its exhilarating, erotic glory. Naturally, the reckless pursuit of amour, divine or otherwise, in this world or the other, is not without consequences, and this is what Neelima Dalmia Adhar explores in Radha: The Princess of Barsana to sublime effect.
Envisioning this timeless love story in a more refined setting, where the humble cowherds of Gokul and Vrindavan reside in marble dwellings and are clad in diaphanous garments of muslin or silk, the author takes the reader deep into the inner life of Radha and her forbidden passion for Krishna, a continuation of a divine dalliance that has long defied social mores, the petty rules of civilisation, and even the laws of time and space. Radha is married off to Ayan Gopa, the Chote Mukhiya of the Gopa clan. This is hardly a match made in heaven: Ayan has installed a paramour in a pleasure palace and continues to be unfaithful to both wife and mistress, thanks to his dubious tastes, which include an interest in virgins and frequenting brothels of ill repute. Radha, meanwhile, remains in thrall to the dark playmate of her dreams, who is yet to be born at the time of her marriage, and certainly cannot be bothered with bringing forth the hundred sons her husband and in-laws expect of her. Needless to say, in the eyes of the village court, only one of them is guilty of an unspeakable crime.
Krishna’s birth and adventures amidst the evil excesses of his demonic uncle Kamsa, who has sworn to kill his would-be killer, make for enthralling reading. Adhar’s writing brings alive the sheer beauty, magic, and horror of those exciting times. Radha’s all-consuming love for Krishna—whose milk mother and playmate she had been—is sensitively handled, and the author does justice to the sensuous as well as spiritual underpinnings that characterise this immortal love story. As Radha herself puts it, she will choose Krishna every single time, even though she knows the exquisite pain of separation will be her lot as he moves on to save the world; both are powerless against the inevitability of their love: “In that surreal moment, I knew that he was merely playing a role assigned to him by the stars and we were all co-actors playing our preordained parts on that vast and mysterious stage of the limitless cosmos.”
Even when summoned before the village sarpanch and charged with adultery and behaviour deemed “an anathema to all the established norms of our civilisation,” she holds her head high, standing tall and proud in the face of universal censure, bolstered by the strength of her love for her dark one—a love she refuses to sully with shame or regret. It is a powerful moment and a stinging slap in the face of a society that not only condones but enables male perversions and peccadilloes while stigmatising and criminalising feminine desire and sexual autonomy. “Dusky limbs, fair legs, tender breasts like blossoming rosebuds, all absorbed with each other, as they rubbed their nude bodies together, emitting resounding peals of laughter. Twittering tales of sexual encounters, novel positions of copulation, new-fangled kissing techniques — each one spelled out her private erotic fantasy and regaled the others with explicit tales of carnal revelry.”
Radha: The Princess of Barsana is an unapologetic celebration of love and desire, and a tribute to the brave women who free themselves from the iron shackles of societal norms to live and love on their own terms.