Garuda learns his mother is enslaved and vows to free her
Garuda, the mighty eagle, carries the serpents to a paradise island, but they demand to be taken to another. Confused by his servitude, he asks his mother Vinata why he must obey them. She reveals she lost a deceitful wager to her sister Kadru and is now a slave, binding her son as well.
Garuda — also called Suparna, the golden-winged one — carried the nagas (serpents) through the sky. They soon descended upon an island in the middle of the ocean, a place of divine beauty. The woods echoed with birdsong and were heavy with flowers and fruit. Charming houses stood beside lotus-filled lakes. Pure winds carried celestial fragrances from the Malaya mountains, and tall trees, stirred by the breeze, showered flowers like rain upon the serpents below. It was a pleasant, enchanting place, dear to gandharvas and apsaras.
The serpents enjoyed themselves there. Then they spoke to Garuda. “Take us to another beautiful island,” they said, “one with large quantities of water. You who travel the sky must have seen many enchanting countries.” The request was not for necessity, but for caprice.
The command settled on Garuda. He was immensely valorous, supreme among birds, yet he was obeying. He thought about it, then turned to his mother, Vinata, who was with them. “Mother,” he asked, “why must I do what the serpents ask me to?”
Vinata’s answer was simple and devastating. “O supreme among birds, I have become the slave of my ignoble sister. The serpents deceived me and made me lose a wager.”
She did not elaborate on the wager’s details then — only its consequence. She and her sister Kadru, both wives of the sage Kashyapa, had once argued over the color of the divine horse Uchchaishravas’s tail. Kadru, claiming it was black, had enlisted her serpent sons to cling to the tail and make it appear so. Vinata, claiming it was white, had lost the bet. The price was servitude. Vinata had become Kadru’s slave, and by extension, the slave of Kadru’s serpent sons. Garuda, bound by filial duty, served his mother’s masters.
When his mother told him the reason, Garuda, the one who travels in the sky, grieved.
He turned back to the serpents. His question was direct, born of this new, painful understanding. “O serpents, what can I get for you? What can I find out for you? What feat of power can I perform? Tell me truly how one can be freed from this state of slavery.”
The serpents heard him. They did not ask for a simple task or a common treasure. They named the one thing in all the worlds that was both priceless and seemingly impossible to obtain. They told him to use his energy to bring the amrita — the nectar of immortality. That, they said, was the price for his mother’s freedom.