Krishna began to swim in the water. On hearing the sound, Kaliya quickly arrived there. His eyes were red with anger and flames issued out of his mouth. He was surrounded on all sides by poisonous snakes and the wives of those snakes also accompanied them. All the snakes coiled round Krishna’s body and began to bite and inject venom into him.

Some cowherds saw Krishna in the water, surrounded by snakes. They rushed back to Vrindavana and told everyone what they had seen. Nanda, Yoshada, Rama and others all came running to the banks of river. “Where is Krishna, where is Krishna?”, screamed Yoshada.

They all saw Krishna in the water in the midst of the snakes. The women began to cry. Some of them proposed that they should also kill themselves if Krishna had indeed died. Hearing all this commotion, Balarama indicated to Krishna that it was high time that he killed the snake.