your bridge home
Tales of the Gods
They took the three. Not because they preferred hatred, because it was shorter, and they could not bear seven.
The two of them had the best posting in existence and they lost it over a door.
Jaya and Vijaya were the gatekeepers of Vaikuntha. Vishnu's own attendants.
They stood at the entrance of the place everything else is trying to reach. Which is about as close to the centre as a created being can get.
And one day four small boys came to the gate.
They were the Kumaras. Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatana and Sanatkumara.
Brahma's first mind-born sons. Sages of enormous antiquity, who by their own choice remain permanently in the bodies of five-year-olds. They came naked, as they always do, and they wanted to go in.
The gatekeepers looked at four naked children and stopped them.
It was, on the surface, the job. Somebody has to decide who goes through a door. But the Bhagavata is precise about what actually happened.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.