Mushika the Mouse

A boy stands before the family altar at the start of the new year, looking up at a small statue. Then he asks his mother a very strange question. Why would the biggest and wisest of the gods choose such a tiny animal to ride? I have asked myself the same thing for many years. The answer is more surprising than the question.

The god is Ganesha, one of the most imposing of the Hindu gods. He has an elephant's head, wide ears and a round, full belly called Lambodara. A god so heavy and so majestic could have chosen a brave lion. He could have chosen a dazzling peacock, or a mighty tiger. Yet he chose me. A little mouse.

My name is Mushika. But I was not born a mouse. Let me tell you the story of my life.

Long ago, so the Hindu tale goes, I was a gandharva, a musician of heaven, and my name was Krouncha. At a gathering in the heavens, I stepped on the sage Vamadeva by accident. Just one careless step. The sage was hurt, and his curse turned me into a small mouse. From a musician flying among the clouds, I fell to the earth. I hid in holes and burrows, and people drove me away.

I ran about everywhere, gnawing and wrecking things, because I no longer knew who I was. Then one day Ganesha appeared. He threw out his pasha, a divine noose, and caught me neatly.

I thought that was the end of my life. I waited for a punishment. But he did not punish me. He looked at me for a long time. Then, gently, he chose me as his companion, as the mount that would carry him. From a cursed creature, I became a friend of the god of wisdom. From that moment, my life turned to another page.

Only much later did I understand why he had chosen me.

A mouse seems able to do very little. But a mouse has something that the lion, the tiger and the peacock do not have. I can go everywhere. I slip through walls. I slide into locked rooms. I squeeze through the smallest crack, one that the eye cannot even see. No door can stop me, and there is no wall in which I cannot find a gap.

Now, Ganesha is the god who removes every obstacle. He needed a friend who could reach every snag, even one hiding in the most secret place of all. I go first, slip in and open the way. He follows and unties what is tangled. He did not choose me in spite of being small. He chose me precisely because I am small.

There is one more layer of meaning, a deeper one. In the Hindu view, the mouse is also a picture of the human mind. That mind is always restless, jumping from one place to another, gnawing from one desire to the next, never willing to sit still. That was exactly what I used to be.

When Ganesha sits firmly on my back, the picture carries a message that is strangely beautiful. Wisdom rides on desire. Not to destroy desire, but to master it. I still run, I am still quick, and I still slip through. But now I carry him, and I no longer drag him after endless cravings. He holds the reins of my own restless mind.

That is what I wanted to tell the boy before the altar. I was chosen not in spite of being small, but because I am small. Every lock has a gap. Every wall has a crack. And the smallest creature finds what the biggest can never reach.

And I, Mushika, went with him all the way to the central region of Vietnam. In Champa, the Cham carved Ganesha in stone. Champa was an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam. I am there too, small, at his feet, as I have always been. Today, at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang, a statue from the Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary still stands. It dates from the 7th to the 8th century. More than a thousand years have passed, and I still carry him.

The smallest mouse in the universe carries on its back the god that people pray to at the start of the year. Not because it is the strongest. But because it can go to places that no one else can reach.