Vishnu

This picture is Vishnu. the maintainer of the universe, one of the three most powerful gods along with Brahma and Siva.  How do I know?  His skin is blue,  He is standing on a snake and snakes also shade him, he has a conch in his hand.  Often an eagle is involved.

Slowly I am starting to make sense of my Hinduism class.  A few 'South Asian' students are in the class and they have learned about these stories and heroes and adventures through their own families.  The teacher is always asking them what their grandmothers have told them.  These stories are second nature to them.

We've briefly done the Vedic writings, the Upanishads, the Bhagad-Gita, the Ramayna, the Mahabarata, now the puruyanas.  It's all a blur to me; so much Sanskrit, so many unfamiliar names.

I'm slowly getting there.

As we were going through this today, I whispered to the young woman next to me who really knows all about this "Wait a minute, where's Krishna?"  "He's an incarnation of Vishnu," she told me.  Ohhhhh.