The Race Around the World

Once Ganesha and Kartikeya were both grown, they were brothers together on Kailash. Kartikeya was the elder warrior, six-faced, fierce, mounted on a peacock. Ganesha was the younger, elephant- headed, plump, mounted on a small mouse. They were as different from each other as two brothers could be.

One day a sage came to Kailash bringing a gift — a single mango. Not a regular mango, but a fruit said to confer immense knowledge on whoever ate it. The sage placed it in Shiva’s hand and asked who should get it.

Both sons were watching.

“I will give it to whichever of my sons proves himself the greater,” Shiva said. He turned to Ganesha and Kartikeya. “There is one fruit. Both of you want it. So I will set a test. Whoever first goes around the entire world three times and returns to me will have the fruit.”

Kartikeya did not even pause. He leapt onto his peacock and shot up into the sky. The peacock was fast. The whole world was wide. Kartikeya was confident — he was the elder, the warrior, the swift. Ganesha was younger, plumper, slower; his mount was a mouse. Kartikeya thought the race was already won.

He flew east. He flew south. He flew west. He flew north. He went around the world once — that took some time. He started his second circuit.

Meanwhile, Ganesha stayed where he was.

He thought for a while. He looked at his parents — Shiva and Parvati, standing together. He smiled.

He got off his mouse. He walked, slowly and ceremoniously, around his parents. Once.

He kept walking. Twice.

He kept walking. Three times.

He stopped in front of them. He folded his hands.

“Father,” he said. “I have gone around the world three times. The world is here. My parents are my world.”

Shiva looked at his small son. He looked at his wife. He laughed. He handed Ganesha the fruit.

When Kartikeya finally returned, sweat-soaked and dust-covered, having gone around the actual physical world three full times, he saw his brother already eating the mango.

He was not pleased. He shouted. He said it was a cheat. He said his brother had broken the rules. He said Shiva had favoured Ganesha.

The Purana lets the dispute be real. Kartikeya, in some versions of the story, left Kailash in anger and went south, to the hill country of Tamil Nadu. He set up his own shrines there — at Palani, at Tiruchendur, at Tiruparankunram — and remained, in South Indian tradition, the great god of the southern lands. Ganesha stayed with his parents in the north.

The story’s point is simple. There are two kinds of greatness. One goes around the world. The other recognises where the world is. The fast brother had done the harder physical thing — three circuits of the earth was no small feat. The slow brother had done the deeper thing — understood that his parents were the world, and that going around them was the same act, only at the right scale.

The Purana does not say which kind is better. It says both brothers are honoured. Kartikeya is the lord of the hills of the south. Ganesha is the lord of beginnings everywhere. Both are worshipped. Both are loved.

But the story is loved especially because of the small son’s clever answer. My parents are my world. The line has carried Ganesha, across all the ages since, into every Indian home.

The next story is the birth of the brother who left south — and the demon who could only be killed by him.