The war is over. The kingdom is restored. And Krishna is leaving. How do you say goodbye to the person whose presence has held everything together?

In Canto 1, Chapter 10, the Bhagavatam slows to watch the citizens of Hastinapura stand in the street, unable to move, as Krishna's chariot disappears from view. Shaunaka Rishi Das and host Bhrigupada Dasa explore what the text is doing in this moment: theologically, poetically, and emotionally. The concept of viraha (loving separation) is introduced here not as a problem to be solved but as a mode of devotional life in its own right.

The episode asks whether absence can be a form of presence, and what the Bhagavatam understands by the relationship between loss and longing.

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The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.