The Obstacle He Broke With His Own Hand

Today is Ganesha Chaturthi. Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, receives the first pooja, invoked before any undertaking begins, so that the path ahead is cleared before the first step is even taken.

Yet the most striking story about him is not one where he clears an obstacle from someone else’s path, but one where he becomes the obstacle-breaker in his own. When sage Vyasa sought a scribe to record the Mahabharata as it poured from him without pause, only Ganesha agreed, and on one condition: Vyasa must recite without ever stopping. Midway through the epic, Ganesha’s pen broke. Rather than halting the sacred work, he snapped off his own tusk and continued writing, unwilling to let a personal loss interrupt something larger than himself. The obstacle that day was not external. 

It was his own broken tool, his own incompleteness, easy to be embarrassed by, easy to pause over. Ganesha simply used what remained of himself, without hesitation, and kept writing. We often wait for obstacles to be cleared before we begin, wanting the right resources, the right conditions, our own limitations resolved first. Ganesha’s example asks something braver of us, to keep moving with whatever we have, even if it means offering a broken, imperfect part of ourselves. This Ganesh Chaturthi, don’t wait for every obstacle to disappear before you begin. Pick up your own broken tusk, whatever incomplete resource or ability you have, and start anyway.