At first glance you would think that Yashoda and Krishna was a portrait of a stoner  family with their stoner cow just hanging out being stoned.

This is mostly due to their large, glassy, half-mast eyes and the blue child, but we assure you, that is not the case. That’s just the way Jamini Roy made eyes ever since he bit the hand that fed him and abandoned British portraiture. Honestly, he was better off without it too. Especially for us, because now we get to make weed jokes instead of boring British portraiture jokes.

This piece depicts Krishna (blue baby), his step-mother, Yashoda and their cow. Krishna is the 8th incarnation of the god Vishnu  and is the god of love, compassion, and tenderness. When Krishna was a wee lad, his parents , Devaki and Vasudeva hid him because his uncle, the tyrant Kamsa heard legend that one of his sister, Devaki’s children would kill him. So they did the super ethical thing of switching Krishna out with another baby for Kamsa to murder. Fortunately, the replacement baby turned into the Hindu goddess, Durga, told Kamsa to shove it, and disappeared. Krishna was fostered by Nanda and his wife, Yashoda until he was old enough to kill his uncle. It’s kind of an Oedipus meets Hamlet sort of story.

All in all, we can learn two things from this piece: 1) killing babies is just wrong and there are no ifs, ands or buts about it and 2) stoned cows are the cutest cows.