The stories your parents never told you

A foundling raised in a Tamil flower garden refused every human suitor and composed the Thiruppavai — thirty Margazhi verses — for the only husband she would have. On her wedding day at Srirangam, she climbed onto the deity's couch and was never seen again. The verses are still sung at dawn through the cold month, in every Vaishnava house in the south.

The sages of Naimisharanya could not agree which of the three gods was supreme. They sent Bhrigu to test all three. He insulted Brahma, was burned by Shiva, and finally walked into Vaikuntha and kicked Vishnu in the chest. What Vishnu did is the story. What Lakshmi did, even less told, is the deeper one.

Hiranyakashipu had earned a boon: no man could kill him, no animal, indoors or out, day or night, on earth or in heaven. His own son loved Vishnu. Every torture failed. And then the demon-king kicked a pillar and asked: "Is your god in this too?"

When his stepmother told him he had no right to sit on the king's lap, the small boy Dhruva did not cry for long. He walked into the forest, learned a single mantra, and stood on one foot until the sky itself bent to look at him.

Anasuya was famous for absolute hospitality. The three goddesses, jealous, sent their husbands — Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva — to her cottage as begging brahmins, with one impossible demand: they would only eat if she served them naked. What she did made all three gods, briefly, into infants.

When Yama came at the appointed hour to take 16-year-old Markandeya's life, the boy threw his arms around the Shiva-linga and would not let go. What happened next changed the rules of death.