GANESHA AND THE MOUSE

 In Hinduism, there is a God namely Ganapathi. Ganesha is also his name. There are a lot of stories about and around him. He is the son of God Siva and Goddess Parvathy. His body is human, but his head is that of an Elephant. The legend is that one day when Devi Parvathy was removing the dust particles from her body; it took the shape of a boy. Parvathy accepted him as her son, named him as Ganesha and asked him to guard the door while she took bath and not to permit anybody to enter. And when she began to take bath, God Shiva came, but Ganesha did not permit him to go inside. In his anger, Shiva chopped off the head of the boy. When Parvathy saw her son dead, she became very angry. Then Shiva fitted the head of an Elephant to the neck of Ganesha and he became alive.

Although an Elephant, Ganesha has only one tusk. There is a story about that also. Once Lord Parasurama, the incarnation of God Vishnu, came to meet God Shiva. But Ganesha did not let him go inside because Shiva had instructed Ganesha to permit nobody to enter. And in his anger, Parasurama c ut off one of the Tusks of Ganesha. However, Parasurama became a devotee of Ganesha later.

These are all stories, probably written by our forefathers in order to make the Epics interesting so that we may absorb the lessons hidden in them.

For example, the Vehicle of God Ganesha – whose body is very big – is a mouse! One may wonder why it is so. On the face of it, such an imagination is beyond all Logic and commonsense. Then why such an absurdity?

Ganesha is also called Vighneswara. Vighnam means obstacle. He is the God who makes things happen, removing all obstacles. It is immaterial whether it is good or bad, because good and bad together makes fullness and perfection. Further, as far as nature is concerned, good and bad cannot be separated because they are the two sides of the same coin.

But to make something happen at a particular time, Ganesha has to travel through time and he travels on his mouse.

Nature never stops functioning and as such, things go on happening always. Many of them are infinitesimally small that we do not even take notice of them. But if we take a serious look at them, we will note that it is these minute things, which always develop into major things. In other words, the minute things take us to the major things. Small mouse takes the Big Ganesha there, where things happen.

Suppose you are a very high official of your country. But how did you reach there? It had a beginning of course. But how did the beginning begin? From something very small that you may not even be remembering it.

Suppose you are an IAS officer. You applied for it, prepared for it and got it. That is what we call the beginning of it. But I am not speaking about that beginning. I am telling about the real beginning, about that moment, when the idea entered your mind. May be it was while you were speaking to a friend. Or when you were reading a newspaper. Or your father might have told you. And he got it from one of his acquaintances. And you or your father or the friend happened to be at a particular place at a particular time. Then only it happened. Normally, we do not give any importance to that moment because it is an insignificantly small incident. But the reality is that it is that small incident, which made you an IAS Officer.

We had two world wars. But if we try to ascertain the causes which lead to the wars, we will learn that at the bottom of them, there was something minute, which gradually developed into the world wars. The minute mouse took Ganesha there, where the real wars happened.

But there is something mysterious in it all. How can a small mouse take a very big Ganesha on its back to the specific place? It is not possible. Then what does it mean?

There is no Ganesha as such who travels from place to place on a mouse. The mouse represents small, very small incidents and Ganesha represents the big, important incidents. Mouse taking Lord Ganesha to a place just means the gradual development of a very small, negligible incident into a major incident in the life of a person or a group or a country or many countries.

So what do God Ganesha and his vehicle mouse teach us? Just one thing. Every big thing has a small beginning. You cannot directly control the big things, but you can control them by being careful about the small things, which will later end up as big things.

There is also another very interesting thing in the story of Ganesha. Rather in the origin of Ganesha. He originated from the dust particles on a human body. Like a cell, one of the several cells which come, exist and die unnoticed‐ly every moment in the universe of a human body, becoming a foetus first and then developing into something big, sometime great.

A mouse growing into Ganesha!

KRISHNA