How Ganesha Got His Elephant Head

High on Kailash, where the snow never melts, Parvati lived with Shiva among his ganas, the wild and loyal crowd of spirits who followed him everywhere. They were good-hearted, but they were his. When Parvati wanted something done, they listened politely and then waited to see what Shiva would say.

One morning, as she prepared for her bath, her friends Jaya and Vijaya said what she had been thinking for a while.

"Every one of them belongs to your husband," they said. "You should have someone who belongs only to you."

Parvati smiled. She took the fragrant turmeric paste she had rubbed on her skin, rolled it between her palms and shaped it into a boy. She shaped his shoulders and his small strong hands, his face and his eyes. Then she breathed on him, and he opened his eyes and looked at her.

"You are my son," she said. "Stand at this door. While I bathe, no one comes in. No one."

The boy picked up a stick, planted his feet and stood at the door.

A little later Shiva came home. He walked up to his own door, and a boy he had never seen in his life raised a stick across his path.

"You can't go in," said the boy.

"This is my house," said Shiva, more amused than annoyed. "Who are you?"

"I'm Parvati's son. My mother is bathing and she said no one comes in. That means you too."

Shiva sent his ganas to move the child aside. The child sent them tumbling back down the path. The gods came to talk sense into him, and he would not move for them either. Here was a boy who had been alive for one morning, holding a door against the whole of heaven, because his mother had asked him to.

Did Shiva not know who the boy was, you may ask. The story says he did not stop to find out. His patience ran out, his trident flashed, and the boy's head fell.

When Parvati came out and saw what had happened, her grief was terrible. It was the kind of grief that shakes the worlds. The sky darkened, the gods trembled, and they ran to Shiva and begged him to set it right.

Shiva was already sorry. He called his ganas.

"Go north," he said. "Bring me the head of the first living creature you find facing north."

They searched, and the first creature they found was an elephant. They brought its head back, and Shiva set it on the boy's shoulders and gave him life again.

The boy opened his eyes. He had a trunk now, and great soft ears, and the same fearless look as before. Parvati held him and would not let go.

Then Shiva did more than make amends. He made the boy the leader of all his ganas, Ganapati, and he made a promise in front of every god who stood there: "From this day, in every prayer, at every beginning, he will be worshipped first. Whoever forgets him will find the road blocked."

That is why, all over India, before anything new begins, people still say his name first.

In Bengal they tell the story without a door and without a trident. It comes from the Brahmavaivarta Purana, and here the trouble starts with a celebration.

Parvati had longed for a child, and Vishnu, pleased with her devotion, promised that he himself would be born to her. And so a baby boy came, beautiful as the moon. The whole of heaven came to Kailash to see him. Every god bent over the cradle, smiled and blessed the child.

Every god except one.

Shani, the dark, slow planet-god, stood at the back with his eyes on the floor. He had a reason. Long ago his wife, angry that he had ignored her, had cursed him: whatever he looked at would be destroyed. Since then Shani had learned to keep his gaze down.

Parvati noticed. She was a mother on the happiest day of her life, and she did not want anyone to hold back.

"Why won't you look at my son?" she asked. "Are you not happy for us?"

Shani tried to explain. Parvati would not hear of it. "Look at him," she said. "Bless him."

So Shani, unwilling, raised his eyes just a little and looked at the baby from the corner of his left eye. At that very instant, the baby's head fell from his body.

The joy in the hall turned to horror. Parvati collapsed with grief. Vishnu did not wait. He mounted Garuda and flew to the banks of the Pushpabhadra river, where he found an elephant asleep with its head to the north. He brought its head back to Kailash and joined it to the child, and the child lived.

The baby looked up at his mother with an elephant's eyes, and the gods, relieved and ashamed, poured blessings on him. They said this child would remove obstacles from every path and be honoured before any other god.

So in this telling it was no one's anger that took the boy's head. It was a mother's love, asking for one blessing too many.