“Why are the two of you always fighting?”
My mother was irritated, as she often was around me and my brother. “Because of you guys, it’s never quiet in this house. I work all day long only to come back home to find you screaming at each other. You never let me have some peace. I feel like neither one of you cares about me.”
Ah, the emotional blackmail. It worked, as it always did. Both of us ran to her, ready with apologies. Eventually though, we started fighting again, this time about which one of us loved her more.
“You guys will make a fight out of everything, won’t you?” my mother smiled. “Why don’t you be quiet for a while and sit down? I might make you some snacks and tell you a story if you do so.”
Sufficiently guilted into silence, we settled down. After a while she came back with luchi and dahl.
“Now that’s more like it, my sweet little boys,” she said. “Today I am going to tell you a story about Kartik and Ganesh, the two sons of Goddess Durga. They were just as naughty as the both of you, or perhaps even more.”
I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about that.
“One day, Kartik and Ganesh were fighting about who loves their mother more. Goddess Durga, annoyed by their ceaseless quarrelling, proposed a competition between them.”
“Isn’t Ganesh the one with the head of an elephant?” my younger brother interrupted. He always interrupted. I felt like he interrupted everything just to make me mad.
“Well, yes,” she smiled at him.
“Why does he have the head of an elephant?” my brother asked.
“Goddess Durga created her son Ganesh from sandalwood. Then, she appointed him as a guard of her house and told him not to let anyone in. Her husband Lord Shiva came home and tried to enter the house, but he wasn’t allowed in. At this, Shiva got very angry and cut Ganesh’s head off.
“When Durga came to know about it, she became very angry at Shiva. Shiva tried to fix this by attaching a new head to Ganesh’s body, and he ordered Brahma, the Creator, to bring the head of the first creature he crossed who was lying with his head facing north. Brahma found an elephant like this, cut his head off and brought it to Shiva.”
“And that’s why we don’t sleep with our head facing north!” I was quite proud of my intellectual moment.
“I doubt Brahma is still looking for a head, though,” my mother laughed. “since Shiva took that elephant’s head and placed it on Ganesh.”
My one smart moment ruined, I became cranky. “Can we go back to the story now?”
Realising that I felt inferior to my brother at that moment, my mother looked at him and said, “Your elder brother already knows the story. He is very smart, isn’t he? And you certainly take after him.”
My mother was always good with sweet talk, at times too good at balancing the whims of her children. She went back to the story.
“Durga wanted her sons to have a racing competition. She wanted both of them to complete one circle around the entire world. The one who could encircle the world first would be considered the one who loved his mother more.”
I looked at my younger brother. He was fairly small compared to me. I bet I could beat him any day in a race.
“Kartik had a peacock as a pet while Ganesh only had a mouse. The peacock that Kartik owned was very fast, and Kartik himself was very fit as he ate his vegetables regularly,” my mother pointedly looked at me as she continued, “While Ganesh ate too many sweets and was not as fast as his brother.”
I looked down at myself. “I am not fat!” I protested.
“I am not saying you are. Anyway, let’s just say Ganesh was too heavy for his mouse to carry him and thus, when Kartik rode his peacock and dashed off to run around the world, Ganesh just stood there and became very sad, as he couldn’t figure out how he was going to win this competition.
“Ganesh took his mouse on his palm and went to Goddess Durga. He asked his mother how he could defeat Kartik, who was riding his peacock and was already very far ahead.
“Listening to his woes, Durga smiled and said, ‘Don’t you think a mother is the entire world to her son?’
“Ganesh had the head of an elephant and was just as smart as one. He immediately understood what Durga was telling him, and walked around his mother. His turn around the world was completed within seconds and he won the race, proving that he loved his mother more than Kartik.”
“What did Kartik do when he found out?” my younger brother asked. “Wasn’t he mad?”
“Well, it takes a long time to take a round around the world, even for a god like Kartik,” my mother said, “and I’m pretty sure Durga was smart enough to convince Kartik somehow that he won the race too!”
She laughingly took both of us in her arms. “She loved them equally, just like I love you both.”
I thought we’d be a little angry at hearing that she didn’t love one of us a bit more than the other, but surprisingly, neither of us were. As we finished our food she asked, “So boys, what do you learn from this story?”
“That you mean the whole world to us!” we both shouted and embraced her.
“You didn’t need a story to know that, did you? Why don’t you boys wash the dishes now, if I mean that much to you.”
We were known to be lazy, but my mother had us good and trapped this time. After we were done with the dishes I went to my mother. “What do we really learn from the story?” I asked.
“To always ask your mother for advice and do what she tells you, which neither one of you does.”
“We did wash the dishes as you told us!” I protested.
“I did most of the work, though!” a voice piped up from behind us. Always picking a fight, my brother.
Cover image via Rapid Leaks
About the author
Shouvojit Sarker was born in a small town in the northern area of Bangladesh. After finishing his high school there, he came to Dhaka to attend college. Now he studies at a university in Australia. He loves to write, but not more than he loves to read. He is especially interested in history, and has a strong voice against oppression.