Twelve who know the way

For Janmashtami this year, Prakash Anna penned a piece. He is my spiritual elder brother — the one who took a teenager to temples and ashrams instead of leaving him to the usual habits, and whose mother once looked at Sripriya and me and said some past-life connection, it seems. It is below as he wrote it. I have set the verse in Devanagari and fixed two typing slips. The rest is his.

Two things I noticed before anything else. The eight qualities Anna opens with are the Gītā's twelfth chapter almost word for word — adveṣṭā sarva-bhūtānām, hating no living being — and the Bhāgavatam's eleventh book says the same to Uddhava at greater length. And the verse itself is spoken by Death. Yamarāja has just been asked by his own messengers why a sinner called Ajāmila slipped through their hands, and he answers with this list. Twelve of us know the way, he says, and he counts himself in.

Twelve names in one verse. This site already reads life as twelve houses, so I did the only thing I know how to do with a list of twelve — I asked each name one question. Where does this person sit in an ordinary week? Not in Vaikuṇṭha. In an office on the second floor, in a kitchen at five in the morning, in a WhatsApp group. Each of them has a story, and each story turned out to be about someone I already know.

1. Brahmāस्वयम्भूSvayambhū · the self-born · the one who starts things

   Born on a lotus with no one to ask, he heard two syllables in the dark — ta-pa — and sat still for a thousand years before he created anything. Much later he stole Krishna's calves and cowherd friends to test whether this village boy was really the Lord, and found Krishna had quietly replaced every one of them. The creator, outdone by his own creation, and grateful for it.

   In the weekThe founder. The one who builds from nothing, and who will one day be surpassed by the thing she built — the junior who writes a cleaner function, the child who argues better. Brahmā's lesson is in the order of events: he listened first, then made. And when the test came back humbling, he bowed instead of doubling down.

2. Nāradaनारदthe wanderer with the vīṇā · the connector

   A maidservant's son in an earlier life, he ate the leftovers of travelling sages and became the sage who never stops travelling. He carries news between worlds, sets stories in motion, arrives unannounced, says the one thing, and leaves before the consequences land. Half the Purāṇas begin with Nārada walking in.

   In the weekThis piece exists because Anna forwarded something. That is Nārada — the one who connects two people who needed each other, the mentor who sends a message at the odd hour, the friend who says "you should talk to so-and-so" and does not wait for credit. Every network has one. Most of us underrate him because he does not stay.

3. Śivaशम्भुŚambhu · the one who holds the poison

   When the gods and asuras churned the ocean, the first thing that came up was not nectar but hālāhala, a poison that would have burnt the three worlds. Śiva drank it and held it in his throat — neither swallowed nor spat out — and his throat turned blue. The Bhāgavatam calls him the best of Vaiṣṇavas. The ascetic is the greatest devotee.

   In the weekEvery team, every family, has someone who absorbs the toxicity so the churning can go on. The manager who takes the angry client call so the engineers can keep building. The daughter-in-law who hears it and does not pass it downstairs. The discipline is in the throat: do not swallow it into the heart, do not spit it onto the next person. Hold it. Let it show as a blue mark if it must.

4. The four Kumārasचत्वारः कुमाराःSanaka · Sanandana · Sanātana · Sanat-kumāra · the perpetual learners

   Brahmā's mind-born sons refused to grow up, marry, or take a role. They stayed five years old forever and wanted only knowledge. At the gate of Vaikuṇṭha the doorkeepers stopped them and got cursed for it. And then, inside, a breeze carrying the scent of tulsi from the Lord's feet entered their nostrils — and four minds fixed in pure brahman were stirred into love. Their knowledge did not finish the job. A smell did.

   In the weekThe ones who never stop studying and never take the title. Wonderful colleagues, and slightly dangerous at a gate — they will curse the doorkeeper for a five-minute delay. What changes them is rarely the better argument. It is a fragrance, a photograph from Rani at seven in the morning, a leaf on a brass shoulder. I keep a note of that when I am trying to convince someone with a slide deck.

5. Kapilaकपिलthe son who taught his mother

   His father Kardama left for the forest, as fathers did. His mother Devahūti stayed, and asked her son to explain the world to her. Kapila did — the whole of Sāṅkhya, the count of the twenty-four elements of nature and the one who watches them — sitting in the family home, as a service to a parent. Philosophy as a son's duty.

   In the weekThe child who sets up the parent's phone. The daughter who explains the mutual fund, the son who shows how the UPI works, patiently, the third time. Kapila says the teaching in a family flows both directions, and the downward-to-upward flow is also dharma. I think of every WhatsApp video call where a twenty-year-old is saying "no Amma, the green button."

6. ManuमनुSvāyambhuva Manu · the one who writes the rules

   The first king, the first householder, the father of the human line — the philologists say our word man and his name share a root. He ruled by a code, raised the children who populated the earth, and then handed the kingdom to his sons and walked into the forest to sit. He wrote the rules and then retired from them.

   In the weekThe one who writes the handbook. HR policy, the family's unwritten rules, the "this is how we do things here" that a new joiner absorbs in a week. Rules are a form of love when the person who wrote them intends to step down from them. Manu's second act matters more than his first: the rule-maker who stays on becomes the rule. The one who hands over becomes an ancestor.

7. Prahlādaप्रह्लादthe boy who would not hate his father

   His father, the asura king, tried to kill him for saying the name Nārāyaṇa — cliffs, poison, elephants, a fire he sat in with his aunt Holikā. The boy stayed steady, and never angry. When Narasiṁha finally tore out of the pillar and ended the father, Prahlāda's first request was for his father's liberation. Adveṣṭā sarva-bhūtānām. The first quality on Anna's list is this boy.

   In the weekThe employee who will not fudge the number, however the boss shouts. The child whose values differ from the house he grew up in. The test is not the steadiness — plenty of people are stubborn. The test is doing it without hatred, and asking for the good of the one who made your life difficult. I know two people who can do that. I am still learning.

8. JanakaजनकVideha · the king who was not owned by the kingdom

   He ploughed a field and found Sītā in the furrow. He ruled Mithilā fully and was called Videha, the bodiless one, because he wore the throne like a borrowed coat. "If Mithilā burns," he said, "nothing of mine burns." The Gītā names him as proof that one can reach the goal by work alone.

   In the weekThe founder who owns the company and is not owned by it. The one who can run a quarterly review with full attention and sleep the same night either way. I meet many people who hold a plough. I meet very few who could watch it burn and still ask the guest whether the coffee is alright. That detachment is not coldness. Janaka found a daughter in his field.

9. Bhīṣmaभीष्मthe vow · the elder who stayed

   He gave up the throne and marriage in one afternoon so his father could marry a fisherman's daughter, and kept that vow for a lifetime. It bound him to the wrong side of Kurukṣetra. Lying on a bed of arrows, he waited weeks for the sun to turn north, taught Yudhiṣṭhira how to rule, gave the world the thousand names of Viṣṇu — and Krishna, whom he had fought, came and stood at his side as he left.

   In the weekThe senior who stayed through three bad managements out of loyalty to a promise made to someone long dead. We are quick to call that a mistake. Bhīṣma's story says something more careful: the vow cost him everything, and the heart that made it was still Krishna's, and Krishna knew. Also — he chose his hour. There is a lesson about exits in there for anyone past forty-five.

10. Bali Mahārājaबलिthe king who gave the third step

    A dwarf brāhmaṇa asked for three paces of land. His guru Śukrācārya warned him — this is Viṣṇu, do not give. Bali gave. Two paces took the three worlds, and for the third he offered his own head. He lost everything and is remembered every year in Kerala, when Amma lays the pookalam for Mahābali to come home and see that his people are well.

    In the weekThe one who keeps his word after the lawyer says he does not have to. The partner who honours the handshake when the contract would let him out. An asura, on the list of the twelve, because of one act of giving beyond the budget. What you give with the head bowed is what you keep. Onam has just gone by; the leaf is still in the kitchen.

11. ŚukadevaशुकदेवVaiyāsaki · Vyāsa's son · the one who told the story

    He walked out of his father's house as a boy and did not look back — so absorbed that the apsaras bathing in a river did not bother to cover themselves as he passed, and did when Vyāsa followed. Years later a king named Parīkṣit was told he had seven days to live. Śuka sat down by the Ganges and told him the entire Bhāgavatam. That is what the book is: what one man said to another who had a week.

    In the weekThe one who can sit with the dying and tell them the story. Most of us cannot. We bring fruit and talk about the weather. Śuka's question is the sharpest of the twelve for me: if a friend had seven days, what would you say? If the answer is nothing, that is what the next twenty years of reading are for.

12. YamarājaयमDharmarāja · the keeper of the ledger · the speaker

    Death is on the list, and Death made the list. His messengers had gone to collect Ajāmila, a man of no good deeds who at the last moment called out to his son, who happened to be named Nārāyaṇa. Viṣṇu's messengers stopped them. Yama, asked why, does not sulk. He explains that even the name said carelessly counts, and that the ones who understand this are these twelve, himself included.

    In the weekThe auditor. The deadline. The doctor reading out the prognosis. The one who keeps the ledger and is nobody's favourite at the party. The Bhāgavatam puts him among the devotees, and I think that is the most useful line in the whole verse. The person who counts your days is not your enemy. He is the one who knows the way home best, because he has walked everyone there.

Twelve who know the way, and none of them look alike. A creator, a gossip, an ascetic, four children, a philosopher, a lawgiver, a boy, a king, a soldier, an asura, a renunciate, and Death. The Bhāgavatam is not describing one kind of good person. It is saying the way is wide enough for a whole office.

And then Anna's line, which I keep returning to: not one who worships Krishna, but one whose heart has become entirely Krishna's. The Gopīs did not make the list of twelve. They did not need to. They are the thing the twelve are pointing at.

So here is where this Aṣṭamī leaves me. Which of the twelve is sitting at your table this week — and which one are you, when the phone is face-down?

Anna's list sent me somewhere else too. If the twelve are the people who know the way, the next question was where the way goes — so I put Krishna himself on a map of India, from the prison cell in Mathura to the child in Guruvayur and the brother in Puri. That is the Krishna trail.

Thank you, Anna. Happy and blessed Aṣṭamī-Rohiṇī to all. 🙏🏻