For Devotees, Krishna Offers Divine Romance

Another Valentine's Day, but what to give your true love if you want something that really speaks to the soul? The Philadelphia Museum of Art might suggest you give the gift of Krishna, the flute-playing god and divine lover worshipped by millions of Hindus in India and around the world.

Visit the museum's online store and you'll find, sandwiched between a glass panel of Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" ($40) and a Cupid and Psyche T-shirt (now just $10), a white canvas tote bag featuring Krishna and his partner in love, Radha. That for the low price of just $24.

And if that's not declaration enough for your significant other, you could opt for the couple's image silk-screened onto a saffron-colored T-shirt. Goodness only knows how an ancient Hindu god became a poster boy for a Western consumerist bonanza, but then again, the Philly Museum might be on to something. After all, even as a young cowherd, Krishna's dark, handsome features, luminous eyes and flute-playing abilities were legendary, moving the gopis, or milk maidens, of his village to ecstasy.

Outwardly, of course, many of the gopis resented Krishna. He was always stealing their clothes while they bathed in the river, and whenever one of them walked by, clay pot overflowing with butter or milk, Krishna would invariably toss a well-aimed stone in her direction, shattering the pot.

Perhaps this seems at first glance like classic bad-boy behavior. But for the devotee of Krishna, one of many earthly manifestations of a universal god, it is something altogether richer and more profound. "God appears on this earth to display his opulence and attract the souls lost in this material world to come back to him," said Anuttama Dasa, national communications director of ISKCON, popularly known as the Hare Krishnas. "Because he is God, even his naughty behavior is all-attractive."

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