Twenty-one days, fourteen hours, and twenty-three minutes. That
is how long our husbands had been fighting.
I honestly don’t even know why they were fighting. It’s not like there was any real reason for
it.
You see, we were a rich family. My husband wasn’t a king or anything, but he
was a bear of a man who had amassed a fortune working for a variety of
uppity-ups in the world. He got paid the
big bucks because he was good at his job and his clients always felt safe in
his care. However, his most important
client and job was always that of the protector and father of our child. On one of his recent jobs, he found a fun little
toy to bring back to our son. It sort of
resembled a big jewel, but it emitted a little light that I’m sure will
eventually run out battery.
Anyway, our son loved his new toy and was playing with it
constantly. Our nanny had even come up
with a fun little rhyme to sing while playing:
"Baby Bear! Baby Bear! The jewel is yours to keep and wear. For he
who would take the lovely thing must first fight Daddy, the great Bear
King!" Our son always called my husband the Bear King instead of Daddy
because we told him that the Bear King could scare away the monsters in his
closet. Unfortunately, the name stuck. However,
twenty-one days ago, our son was playing with his new toy while the nanny kept
an eye on him when some man came bursting into the house and demanded that we
hand the toy over. What would a grown
man want with a child’s toy?
The scream of our nanny sent my husband running out of the
kitchen where we had been preparing dinner and I was hot on his heels. He went bursting into the living room and immediately
rushed the other man. The other man
swung his fist and struck my husband across the jaw, but he merely shrugged it
off and tackled the man. The two men locked together in an intense struggle,
both wrestling to get the upper hand. My
husband beat the other man senseless, but apparently that wasn’t the end of
it. After he threw the man (I have since
learned that his name was Kris) out of our house, they began a sort of street
war, constantly attacking each other to actually win the ‘war’.
I recently met Kris’s girlfriend, who is actually a very
lovely young lady. We have gotten to
know one another over the past twenty-one days while our husbands have been
fighting. Thankfully, there haven’t been
any casualties so far. Anyway, she told
me that the jewel was a sort of obsession of her boyfriends, although she didn’t
know why. Something about a sun god or
something?
We’re working on trying to end this war ourselves, so we can
get back to our normal lives. We’re both
tired of the bodyguards following us everywhere and the various kidnapping
attempts. I mean really, who has the
time for it anymore? I’m thinking some
sort of intervention could work. Or I just
give the stupid toy to Kris and we forget any of this ever happened. Honestly, my husband can find him another toy.
Hopefully not one that has anything to do with a sun god.
Author's Note:
I decided to go a different direction with this story and tried to put it in a more modern context and tell it from a different perspective at the same time. I rewrote the story of Krishna trying to find the Syamantaka Jewel, which belonged to the Sun God. In the original story, the jewel trades hands (by the death of its possessor) several times before ending up in the hands of Jambavat, the Bear King. When Krishna goes in search of the jewel, he finds it with the son of Jambavat and the nurse alerts the king of Krishna's presence. Anyway, all you get is that they fight for twenty-one days, Jambavat surrenders from exhaustion, and Krishna gets the jewel. I like my version better!
Bibliography: Chapter Eight. Shri Krishna of Dwarka and Other Stories by C. A. Kincaid (1920), Indian Epics.
