The Lord is everywhere, even here
Prahlad and Narasimha
Devotion that nothing could burn
Bhagavata Purana, Canto 7
A demon king wins a boon he thinks makes him immortal and demands to be worshipped as God. His own small son keeps singing the name of Lord Vishnu instead. The clash between them gives us Holi, and the fierce form of Lord Narasimha.
The boon and the boy
Hiranyakashipu, king of the daityas, hated Lord Vishnu with his whole being, and he set out to put himself beyond the Lord's reach. By long and terrible tapasya he won a boon: that he could not be killed by man or beast, by day or by night, indoors or outdoors, on the ground or in the air, by any weapon at all. Certain now that death could not touch him, he ordered the worlds to worship him as the only god.
His own son Prahlad would not. The boy had been a devotee of Lord Vishnu since before he was born, taught in the womb by the sage Narada, and he could no more stop saying the Lord's name than stop breathing. His father ordered him to worship him instead. Prahlad answered, gently and without fear, that the Lord he served was greater than any throne.
Everything they tried
What a father should never do to a child, this one did. He had Prahlad given poison, and it did not harm him. He had him thrown before maddened elephants, dropped from a height, set among serpents, cast into fire. Through all of it the boy kept chanting, and through all of it he was unharmed, his mind too full of the Lord to leave room for fear.
His aunt Holika had a boon of her own that fire could not burn her, and she took Prahlad into her lap and sat in the flames to end him. The fire turned. Holika was burned to ash and the boy walked out untouched. We light the Holika bonfire every spring to remember it, the night before the colours, when what was cruel burns away and what is innocent is spared.
Is your God in this pillar?
At the end of his patience, Hiranyakashipu pointed at a stone pillar in his hall and demanded: this Vishnu of yours, is He in here too? Prahlad said simply that the Lord is everywhere, and so He was in the pillar as well. His father struck it with all his rage.
And the pillar split, and out of it came a form that was neither wholly man nor wholly lion: Lord Narasimha. He took the demon at dusk, which is neither day nor night. He laid him across His own lap, which is neither earth nor sky. He carried him to the threshold of the hall, neither indoors nor out. And with the claws of His hands, which are no weapon at all, He ended him. Every door the boon had bolted, the Lord walked through, while keeping its every word. Then the same fierce form turned to the trembling boy with perfect tenderness, and blessed him.
Why it stays with us
Prahlad never argues and never fights. He simply will not stop loving God, and he will not pretend the Lord is anywhere but everywhere. The boon looked airtight; devotion found the seams in it. The form that answered was frightening, but it came for a child's sake, which is the point worth keeping.
