The Elephant in You

 

The Elephant in You

An anecdote from the Brahma Vaivarta Purana
adapted by Sritam Saha

In his initial days, when Shiva was a hermit, he was not really interested to have a baby with Parvati as he considered it an added responsibility. But he knew that Parvati had developed a secret desire to become a mother. So, he insisted Parvati to appease Lord Vishnu so that he would grant her a boon of a child. Since, Parvati had taken the greatest penance of her life, Vishnu was more than happy to consider her as his own mother and asked her to build a small mud idol in which Vishnu would infuse life on the holy Chaturthi.

Thus, Lord Vishnu appeared in the form of a small newly born boy. For the first eleven years of his life, Ganesha was not accepted by Shiva as his own son. Prior to the twelfth birthday, Shiva became extremely fond of him and developed fatherly affection towards Ganesha, which is when Parvati organised a welcome party for all the Gods and Goddesses to look at her son and bless him.

All the Gods, the Goddesses and the demigods came and blessed the young boy and wished both the parents with utmost parental pride and happiness. It was the turn of Shani, the son of Surya, to look at the boy and bless him. But because Shani was cursed with the gaze of catastrophic destruction, he hesitated to look. On Parvati's insistence, as he looked at the boy, the child's head fell off, surprising everyone present at the ceremony.

Despite that the boy's head fell off, Shani blessed him with endless knowledge, and disappeared from there feeling guilty. Shiva instructed everyone around for an immediate head transplant with the head of an animal that could be found at the earliest. An elephant, while drawing water into its trunk from the banks of the Pushpa Bhadra river, was praying to Vishnu to deliver him from this world. He was praying that since he had become aged, he would want to die but leave behind something that everybody in the future would remember him for. Vishnu appeared before him and requested him to give his head so that a young boy whose head had fallen off could be replaced. That way, the elephant’s desire to leave something as a memoir would also be fulfilled. It was brought back and the transplantation was successful, but because the head felt too heavy on the shoulder of the young boy, one tusk was broken by Shiva, so that his son could easily balance the huge head on his shoulders.

After becoming conscious, Ganesha felt that nothing had really happened, until he saw his mother crying heavily. He went to her and asked the reason for her sorrow. Parvati, stricken with grief to see his son with a trunk, a broken tusk and big ears, could not stop crying and apologized for her mistake of insisting Shani to look at him and bless him. Ganesha could see his new face in the reflection that appeared in the teardrops of his mother.

Ganesha said, "Mother, it really doesn't matter how I look. It doesn't matter what the world thinks about me. What matters is what you think about me. You mean the world to me. If you accept how I look, the world will also accept me in a matter of time."

"What you did was because you desired a blessing for me from each of the Gods. Whereas, you forgot that the greatest God I have is you. You are the reason I was born. You are the reason I exist. Your blessings are like the blessings of all the gods and goddesses put together. But because I am your own son, you thought your blessings wouldn't be enough for me. Trust me mom, you are the greatest. You wanted to have me with you even when dad didn’t want to."

After carefully listening to the wise words of Ganesha, Parvati realized that Shani's boon of unparallel knowledge was already existing in her son, nothing that needed to be sourced from outside. His innate power to destroy the hindrances, eliminate distresses of others and several other attributes was not because of the boons granted to him by the Gods, but because he was capable to deal with these challenges from within himself. It had more to do with his faith on his own self, rather than on external attributes.

The blessings are only catalysts for the true potential that remains within every individual. Ganesha lives within every one of us. We have the broken tusks and our trunks, and a responsibility laden head on top of our shoulders as big as that of an elephant. But that does not take away from us what we truly are. Our true potential does not lie in the fact how others describe us as. It lies in the fact how well we can accept ourselves with all the weaknesses and challenges we face every day in our life. We just need to learn to make use of this potential to convert our weaknesses into strengths and the challenges into opportunities.