The Cup Mira Drank

In the dry, gold country of Mewar, in a palace that looked out over a lake the colour of the evening sky, there lived a princess named Mira.

She had been married, when she was very young, to the prince of Mewar. She had not chosen the marriage. The marriage had been arranged the way most royal marriages were, with horses and trumpets and signed papers.

But Mira's heart, even then, had already been promised — to a dark blue figure with a peacock feather, whom she had loved since she was a girl of four.

She loved Krishna.

She loved him the way other people love food, or sleep, or their own children. She loved him while she ate. She loved him while she walked. She loved him in her dreams, and the dreams were so soft she did not always know when she had woken up.

In the palace, this was not considered proper.

A queen of Mewar was supposed to love the king. A queen of Mewar was supposed to keep her face covered in front of strange men. A queen of Mewar was certainly not supposed to walk down to the small temple by the lake and dance there, alone, in front of a stone image, in front of any sadhu who happened to pass.

Mira walked down to the temple anyway. She danced anyway. She sang the songs that have since become so famous that even children today, eight hundred years later, know the first lines.

The prince loved her in his own way and tried to make peace. But the prince's brother, Vikramaditya, did not love her at all. He looked at her dancing by the lake and felt something turn cold in his chest. He felt his own importance shrinking.

He decided that the princess should die.

He chose poison. Quiet poison, he thought, would be tidy. He poured it into a small silver cup. He told the messenger to carry it to her with a careful message — that the king-in-waiting was sending her prasad from the palace shrine, blessed milk, to be drunk at once.

The messenger walked through the corridors with the cup in his trembling hands.

He found Mira in her small inner chamber, where she had set up a small image of Krishna under a single oil lamp. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She was finishing a song. The last word still hung in the air.

She looked up.

"What have you brought me, brother?" she said, gently.

The messenger could not lift his eyes. He held out the cup.

"It is — prasad," he said. "From the prince Vikramaditya. He says you must drink it now."

Mira took the cup in both her hands. She looked into it for a moment. The lamp made a small reflection on the surface of the milk.

She smiled.

It was a smile the messenger never forgot. It had no fear in it. It had no anger. It had something quieter than either of those — a kind of amused tenderness, the way a mother looks at a child who has tried to play a trick she has already understood.

She lifted the cup toward the image of Krishna.

"My Lord," she said softly, "whatever comes from the One I love is sweet. The cup does not decide that. I do."

She touched the cup to her forehead, the way one touches a true prasad. Then she lifted it to her lips and drank.

She drank slowly, without hurrying, the way she did everything that mattered.

When she had finished, she set the cup down by the small lamp.

The messenger was still standing.

"Brother," she said, "go and rest. You have done your duty. Tell the prince I received his prasad."

The man backed out of the room.

That night, the palace waited. They waited for cries from the inner chambers. They waited for the rush of feet, for the call of physicians, for the slow, ugly news that a queen had died.

No cries came.

In the morning, Mira came out of her room to the temple by the lake, as she did every morning. Her step was light. Her face was, if anything, brighter than the day before. She bowed to the rising sun. She began to sing.

The villagers who saw her told the story everywhere. Some said the poison had been changed into nectar by the very touch of her devotion. Some said her body simply did not belong any more to anything ordinary — that she had become a flame, and a flame does not poison.

Mira herself said only, when she was asked, very simply —

"It was sweet. He gave it to me. How could it not be?"

Little mother, life is going to keep handing you small silver cups for the rest of your life. Some of them will hold milk. Some of them will hold things that taste like poison the first time you try them — a difficult night, a sharp word, a long worry.

You will not always know what is in the cup when it arrives.

But you can, if you choose, do what Mira did. You can take the cup in both your hands. You can lift it toward the warmth in your own chest. You can decide, before you drink, who is offering it to you — fear, or the deeper One who has been with you since the beginning.

Tonight, place your hands on your belly as if it were a small silver cup. Whisper, inside, only this — whatever comes is sweet, because love is the one who is pouring. Then breathe out, slowly. The small one inside you is listening, and is learning, very early, how to receive.