Just then Vāyu, Wind, went to the real Pārvatī, who was sitting on a mountaintop deep in tapas, and whispered in her ear that a woman was lying dead beside Śiva’s bed. Pārvatī smiled and didn’t move. She spoke to Night: “I know very well that when I was conceived you slipped into my mother’s womb and colored my embryo with a dark liquid. Even then I turned against you. Though I know that you meant it as a gift, because I partake of the Black. The gods wanted me to be born to seduce Śiva and with his seed produce a son the color of gold. That son is not yet born — and never will be from my womb. But the gold is mine by right. I can’t bear for Śiva to lose interest in me, as he did with Satī and with my sister, Gangā, and all the others. Take back my veil of flesh. Make me pale as a foreigner.” Even as the bold Pārvatī spoke, her dark skin fell from her body to lie in folds on the ground like a rag of cast-off muslin.
Nandin was curled up, all too aware of his shortcomings, when a radiant being with familiar features appeared before him. Pārvatī paid no attention to the guardian bull. She was longing for Śiva to see her. She sat before him in the same position as when she had last seen him. Śiva was silent as his eye took in the golden down of her arms shining from her white robe. Without a word he drew her into himself.
“As many as are the aeons, so many shall be the ways in which Ganesā’s story is told.” Many the aeons, many the stories. Only one thing is certain; Ganesā was born of Pārvatī “without husband,” cinā nayākena. Which is why they call him Vināyaka. He was often to be seen lying awake beside Pārvatī’s bed. He was her mild and thoughtful guardian, trunk curled up on his round belly and one tusk broken. To his right he kept a stylus and inkpot. Pārvatī couldn’t help stroking him whenever she passed by. “You are my son. You’re mine. I can’t say that of anyone else.” She remembered so clearly the day she had lain exhausted on her bed, every pore of her body drenched in sweat, Śiva’s and her own, and begun to fantasize quite furiously. Would she never have a child? Śiva was evasive when she beset him with her questions. Once he had said: “How could I have a child? There is no death in me.” The words were a dagger. “Then I’ll have a child to spite you,” Pārvatī thought. With slow strokes she spread a scented oil over her body, mixed it with her sweat, with the flakes of spent skin. The palms of her hands rubbed angrily over her belly, her legs, her breasts. She was almost scratching herself, so as not to miss the smallest speck. She gathered a lump of something, and Ganesā was born from that. He didn’t have his elephant’s head at first. He was a beautiful little boy who never left his mother’s side. Śiva pretended to be pleased, but actually he was annoyed. Expert as she was in jealousy, Pārvatī rejoiced to see Śiva suffering the torments she knew so well.
One day, after a fight, Gañesā went so far as to bar Śiva from Pārvatī’s room. Śiva hacked off his head. And immediately, with Pārvatī dumbstruck before him, a huge wave of affection for that lifeless body rose within him. He told Nandin to tear off Airāvata’s head, Airāvata being Indra’s elephant. In times past, when Indra was the indisputed sovereign of the gods, the idea would have seemed absurd. But the Devas were a spent force now. One day Nandin returned carrying Airāvata’s noble head on his back. One tusk had been broken in their ferocious duel. With a craftsman’s skill, Śiva fixed the elephant’s head on Gaṇeśa’s neck. Pārvatī looked on, eyes full of tenderness. She saw how deftly Śiva was performing the delicate operation. And at once it crossed her mind that only now would her son be truly himself. From that day on she was no longer afraid of being alone. When Śiva set off on a journey and she had no way of knowing whether he meant to practice tapas on his own, or to seduce an Apsaras or a common woman, or to destroy or give life to some part of the world — whatever the reason his absence irritated her — Pārvatī would stretch out on her bed among heaps of cushions and dictate one long story after another. Stories of the world she had never seen. Curled up at her feet, Ganesā wrote them down. He was a fast and tireless scribe. As soon as she had finished, Pārvatī stroked the broken tust and kissed his broad and wrinkled forehead.
Nothing attracted Pārvatī so much as that huge blue stain that shone through Śiva’s neck, even from beneath the ashes. When she was a child, they had told her the story of how Vāsuki the snake had vomited poison into the ocean and how Śiva had swallowed it up. It had gathered like a lake in his throat. On the surface, the color made one think of sapphire, or the ringed eye spots of a peacock feather. It looked like the mark a bite leaves, many, many love bites, and an ornament too. Pārvatī’s hands circled the stain like a noose. “Why do you like pyres and jackals and bones and vultures and ghosts so much? And when you move around, why are you followed by a procession of disfigured and terrifying creatures, why do you treat them like your oldest friends? In the palace where I grew up, I never saw such things. Yet I always loved to invent songs full of words that made me shudder, because I was told you partook of such things, and my friends, looked at me as if I were daring them to do the same. Horror and pleasure must have been born together. That’s how it was for me. I know they live one inside the other. That’s how it has to be. Otherwise they would be dull. But now that we’re alone, and will go on being alone, with only the whines and wiles of the gods to bother us from time to time, tell me: why do I always suspect that you get more pleasure from your ashes than from my body?” Stubbornly, brazenly, Pārvatīwent on and on asking these same questions. Then Śiva would smile, would laugh, would say nothing, change the subject, shift his grip on Pārvatī’s body, turn her this way and that in his hands. But one day he looked Pārvatī straight in the eyes and said: “Daughter of the Mountain, since you reproach me with my love of ashes, I shall tell you a story, the story you have always wanted me to tell you. You know that when I met you I was a widover. I would still rave wildly from time to time thinking of her death, of Satī, of She-who-is. Before Satī was born, reality was less real…”
Even when he retires to remote mountain peaks, when he is rapt — in thought? in tapas? or in something that is both thought and tapas? — Śiva is never alone. From his long hair, so black it is almost blue, drips the Goddess, now Gaṅgā. They rarely speak to each other. But Gaṅgā is witness to everything Śiva does. She is present at his embraces that have no end. Yet she is never jealous. She flows — that’s all. But it’s enough to drive Pārvatī wild. Majestically, she sits beside Śiva on Kailāsa. All creatures bow before her, none sure of attracting her attention. Sometimes Pārvatī looks anxious: she casts a sidelong glance above Śiva’s ear, at his temple.
“Who is that damn woman hiding in your hair?” said Pārvatī. Once again she couldn’t stop herself. “The sickle moon,” said Śiva, as though thinking of something else. “Oh, so that’s what she’s called, is it?” said Pārvatī, in a tone that would one day be the model for all female sarcasm.
“Of course, you know that perfectly well,” said Śiva, more absentminded than ever.
“I’m not speaking about the moon, I’m speaking about your girlfriend,” said Pārvatī, snarling.
“You want to talk to your friend? But your friend Vijayā’s just gone out, hasn’t she?” said Śiva. Pārvatī went off, white with rage.
Śiva and Gaṇgā met as two excesses. Śiva allowed the celestial river to break over his head before touching the earth, which otherwise could not have survived the impact. And in ever bathing the motionless Śiva’s head, ever flowing in streams down his face, Gañgā stopped the scorching god from withering up the whole world. This beneficial and ever-renewed equilibrium was also a secret love affair. Of no other woman was Pārvatī so jealous as of Gañgā. No sooner did she come close to him than she saw her sister in the quivering drops on Śiva’s face. Even his saliva smacked of Gangā.