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Escape from Heaven

18x28 giclee on canvas

 

Escape From Heaven is based on the Legend of the Hindu Apsara (angel) Urvashi.

 

Urvashi found the atmosphere among the Gods stifling. Everything in heaven seemed too perfect. The colors were too bright, the flowers smelled too sweet. Nothing seemed real to Urvashi. Wanting a taste of reality, Urvashi often snuck away to the Earth at night with her fellow Apsaras to feel the wet dew under her feet and the soft breeze against her body. It was during one of these many earthly excursions that she met King Pururava.

 

King Pururava envied the Gods. He was a regular invitee to Indra's court and dreamed at night of the grandeur he saw there. He would often take his chariot above the clouds and hurtle through the skies at break-neck speed. It was on such an occasion that the two met.

 

Urvashi was returning to heaven just before dawn with the other apsaras, when she was abducted by a demon . Pururava saw the abduction and chased the demon on his chariot and freed Urvashi from his clutches. The brief period their bodies touched changed their lives forever. For the first time Urvashi experienced the warm flesh of a mortal, for the first time she heard blood pounding in veins and for the first time she heard the inhalation and exhalation of breath. Pururavas had seen Urvashi in Indra’s court before and to actually be close to the most beautiful woman in heaven exhilarated him. Pururava left Urvashi with her friends but when they parted each was madly in love with the other.

 

Eventually the Urvashi became the wife of King Pururava and remained on earth with him for the rest of his life. The two had many sons.

 

Copyright 2007 Christopher Beikmann. All Rights Reserved

 

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Uploaded on May 13, 2007
Taken on May 13, 2007