Krishna’s Butterball

“Equipoise” is a balance of forces and interest. For dancers, outfielders and cats of prey, it is the state between stillness and motion. It’s when you’re ready to pounce, you’re sprung, you’ve stopped just for a second but your momentum may tip your body weight onward.

In the town of Mahabalipuram, there rests on an incline a 250 ton granite boulder named Krishna’s Butterball. For at least 1200 years, it has paused briefly (in geological terms), to collect itself before continuing its choreo-tone poem performance down the hill.

In 1908, the local British administrator was so unnerved by its equipoise, and so emboldened by a colonizer’s arrogance, that he hired seven elephants to yank it from its place. He failed. It’s still catching its breath today.