Ganesha's curse

Lord Ganesh came to earth, got himself worshipped, stuffed himself to the bursting point with sweets offered by his devotees, and was riding back home on his mouse. It was dark, there were not many on the road and the mouse faltered on carrying the heavy burden. The moon saw the dozing Ganesh on the tiny mouse, thought that it was a funny sight but managed to hold back his laughter. All of a sudden a snake came across the road. The mouse got scared and it shivered with fear.
Lord Ganesh, who was half asleep, lost his balance and tumbled down bursting his stomach and spilling the contents. But he collected his wits fast, collected the spilled sweets faster and stuffed them back in to whatever had remained of his stomach. Being the god of intelligence it was a moment’s job for him to solve the zigsaw puzzle of his stomach pieces and place them back in their right places. Now, he looked around for something to tie his stomach securely, saw the snake that was still there looking at the havoc that it had caused, snatched it and tied it around his stomach. He got on to the mouse again and the mouse started tumbling along carrying the additional weight of the snake. The moon could not restrain him self any more and laughed aloud.
Lord Ganesh was very angry and wanted to hurl a stone at the moon. Since he could not risk bending to pick up a stone, he broke a piece of his tusk off and hit the moon with it. Not being satisfied with the physical damage done, he cursed the moon pronouncing that who ever saw the moon on Bhadrapada shuddha chaturti, ( according to lunar calendar) will be falsely implicated in a crime or wrong doing. I think that his idea was to prevent people looking at the moon, there by making the moon feel neglected.

It was about two weeks after the Ganesha chaturti festival. One early morning I was trying out some Yoga and Pranayaama instead of my usual walk. My wife, who can not bear the sight of me trying to tie myself into knots and suffocating, went out for a walk. I sat in ‘Yogamudra’ and was in the middle of a cycle of -breath in - hold - breath out - hold - procedure, counting seconds, when my wife barged in and broke my concentration making me gasp and loose rhythm.
“Look at you sitting like a Buddha when your patients are getting heart attacks and dying. Do you know what happened?”
I did not, and shook my head to indicate that, trying unsuccessfully to get back the rhythm of breathing.
“You removed Rodrigues’s tooth is it not? Poor fellow it seems was bleeding the whole night, had a heart attack because of that and is dying in ICU. And you are sitting here with your eyes closed. You and your yoga. Open your eyes and see what is happening around.”
When it came to holding my breath, I could barely manage few seconds with out ever reaching the optimal 4:8:4:8. But, on hearing this news, my breath got stuck and I was going in for a record holding time. It was no time for creating records and so with an effort I managed to get it unstuck and regained my breath. I asked my wife where she got the news?

On her walk she had met Mrs. Dessai.
D: Good morning. Came alone ?
W: Yes. My husband did not come today.
D: Good thing. Every body will be asking the same thing no? difficult to answer.
W: What same thing? what difficulty? I did not get you.
D: You don’t know?
W: Don’t know what?
D: Doctor removed Rodrigues’s tooth no? Poor man, it seems he bled the whole day and got a heart attack. He is in the ICU at Margao. Must be struggling for life. Everybody feels doctor should have been more careful. What else will happen if you remove tooth when blood pressure is so high? My husband had told Rodrigues not to have his tooth removed. Or at least consult Dr. Fernandes. He is specialist it seems. MDS. Doctor Raghunandan has experience but what is the use now? Ok. I am going. Have to prepare breakfast for children. They will be late for school.

My wife had cut her walk short and rushed home. On her way back she had met Mrs Naik and Mrs Mascerenhas both of whom endorsed Mrs Dessai’s news and views. My wife was furious.
What ever my faults are, she does not tolerate any one crticising me and casting aspersions. It is entirely her prerogative. So, she had taken over.

The news did worry me. I was anxious about Rodrigues, one of the few sensible people around and also, such news is not good for practice. I realized why Mr. Naik wanted to cancel the appointment for extraction that day. I had to continue to live and practice in the same neighbourhood. I pulled on my clothes and ran to Rodrigues’s house. I wanted to get first hand information and was hoping that some one will be there.

I rang the bell. No response. I waited for some time and rang again. No response. I decided to get the name of the hospital from Mr. Naik, Rodrigues’s neighbour, and go there. I was climbing down the steps when I heard the sound of door latch. I turned around and could not believe myself. Rodrigues was standing there! I first looked at his feet. The toes and heels were in order. So it was not his ghost. I had read that a ghost can make itself resemble a human perfectly but will always get the feet wrong. The toes face back and the heels in front. That was not the case. It was Rodrigues alright. I asked him what is he doing at home? He had no business there. He ought to be lying in a coffin or at least in the ICU on his way to one.

“So, you heard the rumours already? I am sure you are disturbed. I am sorry. I have been telling all these people who came to see me that my extraction had nothing to do with my condition but they won’t listen. They insist that it was because of getting my tooth removed. Idiots. Sorry again doctor. I was about to call you and tell about it. I came back from the hospital late last night. Come in and have a cup of tea and I will explain.”

Rodrigues had come to my clinic about three days back. He had severe pain in one of his teeth and wanted it removed. I knew that he was hypertensive and asked him to get his pressure checked. He said that he has had it checked just the day before and that he is fine. He had already taken his tablets that morning and insisted that I remove his tooth. He knew from experience that pain killers are not of much use and did no intend bearing with it another day. Since I endorse that view and since I had extracted three of his teeth earlier, without trouble, I removed his tooth and with in ten minutes he was out.
Late that evening he had felt some discomfort in the chest and went to see a cardiologist. The ECG looked a bit doubtful and to be on the safer side, the cardiologist had injected an anticoagulant or a ‘blood thinner’. He was kept in the hospital for observation. His family fussed over him and wanted him to have absolute rest. One of them was feeding him with a spoon at night and while doing so, disturbed the blood clot that had formed at the site where the tooth had been removed. It started bleeding again and since a strong anticoagulant had been injected, the bleeding did not stop. Still, the bleeding was not very heavy and they were able to manage that with packing the wound repeatedly through the night. Since he was not allowed to get up and use the wash basin he had to spit out into a jar and more than a litre of a red mixture of spit, blood and water collected in the jar. The sight of a ‘gallon’ of blood, complaint of chest pain and history of extraction was enough to get the tongues wagging and trample my reputation into dust.

As I have said earlier, Rodrigues is one of the sensible people around and he remained sane and helped in containing the damage.

I knew the story of lord Ganesh and the moon from my childhood days and on chaturti day we used to keep our heads down if at all we went out. Even if we just imagined having seen the moon, we used to rush home and read ‘Syamantakopaakhyaana’, the story of Lord Krishna getting in to trouble because of seeing the moon on chaturthi, which is supposed to be an antidote for the curse.

This year, I did see the moon on Ganesha chaturthi day but thought that the curse had lost it’s validity after passing through ‘Tretayug’ and ‘Dwaparayug’. The ‘Kaliyug’ does not care for these things. But I did not realise that Lord Ganesh has given it a very long expiry date and that it is in force even now.
I purchased a copy of ‘Syamantakopaakhyaana’ to have it handy just in case!