The Ganesha Riddles

The curtains rose yesterday on a nearly two week long fest of noise pollution ending with water pollution marked by a wee bit of fun and some real great goodies to gobble up . I am talking about the Ganesh festival.


Now the Ganesha story has always puzzled me. Granted that the puranic tales have as many holes as a Bollywood potboiler but the Ganesha tale is virtually a mythological sieve. It leaks real bad. It has more questions than answers.


First about the creation of Ganesha. Looks like his mom –to-be wanted to have a bath one day and to ensure that nobody barged in while she is bathing, she created a boy to guard the house. That boy is Ganesha.


Now, the first unsolved riddle. If Parvati was washing herself in a bathroom, didn’t the bathroom have doors? Or was she afraid that someone would knock them down? And secondly, was it the first time she was having a bath? If so how come she didn’t need a guy to check unwarranted entries into the house earlier?


The other theory is she was bathing in an open swimming pool. That could have been trouble. We Indians are a nation of voyeurs. (Once I saw a whole lot of guys standing in queue and taking turns to peer through a bamboo fence over the wall of a five star hotel in Delhi. It turned out they were ogling at white women having a swim. Since we create gods in our own image they could be voyeurs too. Let us assume the wall around her pool had a bamboo fence through which people could peer, May be she needed a guard to dissuade them. Boards like NO ENTRY or VOYEURISM CAN BE INJURIOUS TO HEALTH just wouldn’t have been enough to keep the oglers at bay. They are a stubborn tribe.


Aw come on! Parvati was a goddess. She could have put a cloak of invisibility around the whole place with her divine powers. After all if Harry Potter can have a cloak of invisibility a goddess can create one. No that was not to be. She had to create a boy, a real tough one at that to guard the place. In her divine forgetfulness, she failed to make an exception even for her hubby dearest. (Now doesn’t the tale really leak like a sieve or look very Bollywoodish?)


Now this is how, the scene will pass in a Bollywood movie.


And so who turns up when the boy was guarding the gates. The hubby notorious for his short fuse himself. So the boy blocked the path.


Shiva: Hey don’t know who I am?

Boy: Who are you? I think introductions are in order. For me you look like a very uncouth chap will ashes all over your body and snakes in your neck. No one told you how to dress properly?

Shiva: Hey everyone knows I am Shiva!

Boy: Is that supposed to mean something?

(Shiva’s ego is hurt and he controls with difficulty a strong urge to open his third eye)

Shiva: I am the owner of this house!

Boy: You got ID proof or something?

Shiva: And what is your ID?

Boy: I am my mother’s son.

Shiva: That everybody is. Who is your mom?
Boy: Parvati devi.

Camera shows a shocked expression on Shiva’s face as the music directors minions jack up the decibel levels. The string section wais. Drums thunder and the woodwinds and brass go bonkers. Parvati’s son! And I didn’t even kick in the genes, thinks a dazed Shiva..


Let us fast forward a bit here. The boy is stubborn in his no entry mode and an enraged Shiva cuts of his head and burns it. Parvati goes ballistic when she comes to know what has happened. And her going ballistic is no joke. She can morph into Kali or some other ferocious being and rain destruction.(She wouldn’t have had to go ballistic if she had used some divine spell to make her bathing place invisible. But as I have already said myths are like Bollywood plots full of holes.) And so an elephant head is transplanted on the kiddo’s neck (Obviously there was no SPCA then). And sonny boy becomes a god. And all is well that ends well.)


And why Elephant’s head? Couldn’t the gods have revived the burnt head? Or was there a shortage of heads in Brahma’s baby factory? Ah questions, questions. Haven’t I already said myths leak like sieves. Take the story of Krishna. How come Kansa didn’t have the good sense to lock up Devaki and Vasudeva in separate cells, so that they couldn’t procreate? Krishna’s villainous uncle seems to have been as dumb as Bollywood baddies.


Ah let us not break our heads anymore over our gods and their myths . Just pass on the modaks, will you?

 

Ashima thanks for accepting that myths are illogical.

 

Viswa I really pity Ganesha's lot Of all the gods he is the one who is treated like a babu in government office waiting for his itching palms to be greased. Everyone promises him a bribe if he fulfills their wishes. As someone said if there is a God he would find atheism a lesser insult than religion. I agree we are not always (say about 98%) logical. Reason is a faculty Homo Sapiens developed rather late in their evolution Its roots are less deeper than other extra rational faculties like emotions, instincts, appetities, phobias etc.

 

Sindmani we can take good points from anywhere and move on. May be the fun part of mythology is its lack of logic.L

 

Jayasaka42, it is better to have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.