Traditional accounts portray Mirabai’s devotion as rooted in a formative experience during her early childhood. As a young girl, she is said to have witnessed a marriage procession and, with a child’s innocence, asked her mother whom she herself would one day marry. Her mother, seeking both to console and to guide her, pointed to Krishna and replied that he was to be her husband. This simple remark, offered in a domestic and intimate setting, became far more than a casual answer; it shaped the entire orientation of Mirabai’s inner life. From that moment, Krishna was not merely a deity to be revered from afar, but the personal beloved to whom she belonged completely.

Over time, this childhood “marriage” to Krishna matured into a steadfast and exclusive bhakti. Mirabai came to regard Krishna as her eternal husband and Lord, and this conviction became the lens through which she viewed all worldly relationships and obligations. Her refusal to acknowledge any bond as higher than her devotion to Krishna flowed naturally from that early impression, which had taken deep root in her heart. The stories of her life and poetry consistently reflect this inner stance: the divine beloved is not an abstract ideal, but the living presence to whom she had been given in childhood and to whom she remained unwaveringly faithful.