Sometimes it’s been said that karma is so complex that living entities, though intimate friends in this lifetime, are like sticks of wood on the surface of a great body of water, sometimes coming together, then drifting apart forever. This concept is found in a verse in the tenth Canto when Nanda Maharaja pacifies Vasudeva, Krsna’s father about the death of “Yasoda’s female child”: “Many planks and sticks, unable to stay together, are carried away by the force of a river’s waves. Similarly, although we are intimately related with friends and family members, we are unable to stay together because of our varied past deeds and the waves of time.” (5.25)