The Midwife's Warning

Folk stories from the Putana tradition — original tales, analysis, and storytelling history

The Midwife's Warning

In a village near Mathura — close enough to see the spire of the Krishna temple, close enough to hear the evening aarti bells — a midwife named Kamala had a rule. She had delivered six hundred babies over thirty years, and for every single one, she gave the same instruction to the mother: 'For forty days, no stranger touches the child. No one you do not know by name and by family holds the baby. No exceptions.'

Most mothers agreed without question. The forty-day rule was common enough in the region — the baby was considered vulnerable to evil eye, to spirits, to a hundred unnamed threats. Kamala's version was stricter than most. She did not say 'no strangers should see the baby.' She said 'no strangers should touch the baby.' The distinction mattered.

In her thirtieth year of practice, a family in the village had a son — a healthy boy, born on an auspicious day, the first male child after three daughters. The family was overjoyed. Relatives came from four villages. Sweets were distributed. The father lit lamps at the Krishna temple.

On the seventh day, a woman came. She said she was a distant relative of the father's family — from Agra, recently arrived, just passing through. She was well-dressed. She had brought gifts for the baby: a small gold bangle, a cotton blanket, and a jar of what she said was special ghee for the mother's recovery. She was warm, attentive, and specifically interested in the baby.

The mother, exhausted from the birth and the celebrations, was grateful for the help. The woman cooked. She cleaned. She sang lullabies that the mother did not recognize but found soothing. She asked to hold the baby. And then she asked — gently, naturally, as if it were the most normal thing in the world — if the baby was hungry.

Kamala arrived for her daily check-up at that exact moment. She walked through the door and saw the scene: the stranger seated, the baby in her arms, the woman adjusting her blouse. Kamala did not hesitate. She crossed the room, took the baby from the woman's arms, and handed the child to the mother. 'Who is this?' she asked the father. The father said she was a relative from Agra.

'What is her name?' Kamala asked. The father looked at the woman. The woman smiled. 'Pushpa,' she said. Kamala looked at her for a long moment. 'The ghee you brought. Where did you get it?' The woman said she had made it herself. Kamala picked up the jar, opened it, smelled it, and put it down.

'Leave,' she said to the woman. Not aggressively. Not loudly. With the flat certainty of someone who has seen something and recognized it. The woman protested — she was family, she was helping, why was the midwife being rude? But Kamala stood between the woman and the baby and did not move. After a moment, the woman left. She took the gold bangle. She left the ghee.

Kamala threw the ghee into the fire. It burned blue. Not the golden flame of clarified butter — blue, like copper, like poison, like something that was not ghee at all.

The mother asked what had just happened. Kamala sat down and told her the story of Putana — the beautiful stranger who came to Gokul with poison in her breast and love on her face. She had told this story six hundred times. She would tell it six hundred more. Because the story was not a myth. It was an instruction manual. And the instruction was always the same: Do not let a stranger feed your child. Not even if she is beautiful. Not even if she is kind. Not even if she brings gold.

What Is Putana?

Putana (पूतना) is a Rakshasi — a demoness — from the Puranic tradition of Hinduism, most famously known as the entity who attempted to kill the infant Krishna by breastfeeding him poisoned milk. She is the ur-monster of Indian childhood fear: the beautiful stranger who appears as a loving mother-figure and is, underneath, a killer. Sent by the demon-king Kamsa to find and destroy the infant Krishna before he could grow to fulfill the prophecy of Kamsa's death, Putana disguised herself as a beautiful woman, entered the village of Gokul, and took the baby to her breast. The milk was laced with deadly poison.