It was the night of Ganesha Chaturthi — the fourth night of the bright fortnight of the month of Bhadra — and Ganesha had been travelling, as the remover of obstacles and patron of new beginnings often travels, through the world, attending to the work of the cosmos and accepting the offerings of devotees.
He had eaten a great deal. Modaka — the sweet rice flour dumplings that are his particular favorite, stuffed with coconut and jaggery — had been offered at every house, and Ganesha, whose relationship with food is one of genuine delight rather than mere appetite, had accepted each offering with the cheerfulness and complete presence that characterizes all his dealings with devotees.
His vehicle was a mouse — a small creature, quick and nimble, perfectly capable of carrying the divine elephant-headed god by some arrangement that the story does not question because the story is interested in something else entirely. The mouse ran through the night and all was well until, somewhere on a path, a snake crossed suddenly and the mouse startled and Ganesha, full of modaka, toppled.
He fell. The modakas scattered. He gathered them back up, tucked them in, and took the snake and tied it around his large belly as a belt because that is the kind of pragmatic creativity that characterizes a god who removes obstacles — when you encounter a snake on your path, you turn it into an accessory.
The moon saw all of this from the sky and laughed.
Not the laugh of someone who has found the accidental comedy of the moment — we’ve all had falls that are funny in retrospect, and there is a kind of laughing at mishaps that is affectionate and shared. The moon’s laugh was different. It was the laugh of someone who thought they were better than what they were laughing at, who found the fat-bellied, elephant-headed god’s dignity impaired by the fall and took pleasure in that impairment.
Ganesha looked up at the moon. His face — round and benevolent, the face that devotees approach in absolute trust because the remover of obstacles has never, not once, turned away a sincere prayer — held an expression that those who saw it later described simply as still.
He pronounced the curse.
‘You pride yourself on your beauty,’ Ganesha said. ‘You display yourself in the sky for the whole world to admire and you use that admiration as a source of self-importance. From this moment, whoever sees you on this night — the night of Ganesha Chaturthi — will be accused falsely of something they did not do. And you yourself will diminish.’
The moon began to shrink immediately, withdrawing from the sky in the wordless understanding that this was not a negotiable situation. The darkness that came was the darkness not of the new moon but of the moon having disappeared entirely, fled from the sky in the shame of the cursed.
Without the moon, the world was significantly inconvenienced. The gods who regulated the tides and the cycles of growth and the navigation of ships by night came to Brahma and then to Shiva and eventually — because this was ultimately Ganesha’s domain — back to Ganesha.
‘Please,’ they said. ‘The moon has learned its lesson. The world needs the moon. Can the curse be modified?’
Ganesha, whose mercy is as large as his appetite, agreed to a modification. The moon would return. But on the night of Ganesha Chaturthi — the fourth night of Bhadra — no one should look at the moon. Those who look at it on that night, even accidentally, will be subject to false accusation. This is the memory of the original curse, preserved in the prohibition.
Every year, on Ganesha Chaturthi, devotees are warned not to look at the moon. Not because the moon is dangerous but because the story is being honored — the story that contains several teachings simultaneously.
The first teaching is about who we laugh at and why. The second is about the consequences of pride disguised as pleasure. The third — and this is the one the tradition considers most important — is that even the most powerful, most beloved, most auspicious god has the authority to correct what needs correcting, and that correction, properly received, is not the end of the relationship but its deepening.
The moon comes back every month. Ganesha sits on his mouse with the modaka and the snake-belt and the contentment of a being who has never required dignity to know his own worth. And on Chaturthi, the wise keep their eyes away from the sky.