Uttara, wife of Abhimanyu and the daughter-in-law of Arjuna and Subhadra, is expecting her child. Aswattama, son of Drona, shoots the Brahmastra to kill the foetus in Uttara’s womb. She runs up to Lord Krishna and cries for help, and the Lord immediately helps her. The reason is that Uttara brings her palms together in anjali pose and the Lord is always moved by the anjali of His devotees, said Kidambi Narayanan, in a discourse.
The Lord can only be won over by anjali. Uttara has now done an anjali to the Lord. So how can the Lord keep from saving her? Those in the banking industry know that the central bank of a country is the lender of the last resort. Beyond this there is no place else to go. Likewise, there is none beyond the Lord who can save us. If He does not, then no one else can. So Uttara has come to the right place.
Lord Krishna enters Uttara’s womb, and forms a fort around the foetus. So the Brahmastra is unable to harm the child. The Lord guards the child with His discus, and the discus circles inside Uttara’s womb. The child thus protected is Parikshit. Parikshit is the surviving heir of the Pandava lineage and becomes King. When Parikshit is cursed to die in seven days, he asks Sage Suka to narrate the story of Lord Krishna’s life, so that he can hear about the Lord’s exploits before he dies. In fact the last seven days of Parikshit’s life are spent in listening to stories about Lord Krishna. It is Parikshit, at whose request Suka narrates the Srimad Bhagavatam. Unlike ordinary people, who worry about death even when there is no immediate danger to their lives, Parikshit is a marked man and yet he does not worry.
