Who Hanuman is
Hanuman is the son of the Wind and the monkey woman Anjana. As a baby he took the rising sun for a ripe fruit and leapt at it, and Indra's thunderbolt broke his jaw. He grew up strong, and so wild that the sages laid a curse on him: he would forget his own strength until someone reminded him.
He met Rama in the forest, when Rama was searching for his stolen wife, and served him for the rest of time. He leapt the sea to Lanka, found Sita under a tree in Ravana's garden, gave her Rama's ring, and burnt the city with his own tail when they set it on fire. In the war he flew to the Himalaya for a healing herb and, not knowing which it was, brought back the whole mountain.
He asks for nothing for himself. When Rama was crowned and offered him a gift, it is said, he asked only to live as long as Rama's story is told, and so he is one of the deathless ones, still somewhere on earth, listening whenever the Ramayana is read.
He is the god of strength, courage and quick help. North India sings the Hanuman Chalisa to him on Tuesdays, wrestlers keep his image in the pit, and nearly every village has a red-painted Hanuman at its edge.
Shri Guru charan saroj raj, nij man mukur sudhari: the first line of the Hanuman Chalisa, cleaning the mirror of the mind with the dust of the teacher's feet.
