Krishna: The Complete Story of His Magical Childhood Adventures | Hindu Mythology for Sleep
A slow, quiet retelling of Krishna’s childhood, made for falling asleep to.
Of all the gods in all these stories, he’s the only one most people meet as a baby — and the childhood episodes are told in India not as the prelude to his real life but as the best part of it.
It begins badly, with a king who had been told one of his sister’s sons would end him, and did the obvious terrible things about it. The child was carried across a river at night, in a storm, and swapped for another, and grew up in a cattle village with people who had no idea what they were raising. What follows is years of that village: a toddler who stole butter and was tied to a grinding stone for it and dragged it out through the door anyway; a boy whose mother looked into his mouth to check for dirt and saw the entire universe in there and then was allowed to forget it; a hill lifted on one finger and held up for seven days like an umbrella over everyone who lived under it; a snake in a poisoned river and a dance on its hoods. And a flute, played in the evenings, that people walked out of their houses to follow.
The tone of it is unusual for a myth. It’s warm, and often funny, and the people around him keep oscillating between telling him off and realising, briefly, what he is. Then forgetting again, because they love him.
The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off during the crossing of the river and surface somewhere in the fields years later, that’s the intended use. Most people don’t make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.
Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.
Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can’t sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.
