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Festivals
The gods needed a general. What they got was a six-day-old baby, and his mother came with him.
The gods had a problem they could not solve themselves.
Tarakasura held a boon: no one could kill him except a son of Shiva. And Shiva, after Sati died, had stopped being anybody's husband and gone to sit on a mountain, which made a son of Shiva a fairly theoretical prospect.
So the whole of the second night's story, Parvati's nine thousand years of penance, happens partly because of this. She wins Shiva. They marry. A son is born.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.