Saraswati and Her Veena

She doesn't carry weapons. She carries a veena, a book, and a mala. Knowledge is her power.

When Lord Brahma created the world, he made a strange thing first. Trees, animals, mountains, rivers. But everything was silent. Nothing could speak. Nothing could sing. Nothing could think a clear thought. Brahma realised something was missing. So out of his mouth came a beautiful goddess in a white saree, holding a veena. The moment she touched its strings, the whole creation began to hum, learn, and laugh. Her name was Saraswati.

A World With No Sound

Long, long before any of our other stories, before Rama, before Krishna, before Ganesha, before even the heavens, there was just Lord Brahma sitting on a giant lotus, busy creating the universe.

Brahma is the creator. He is the grandfather god. He has four faces, one looking in each direction, so that no part of creation gets forgotten. From his mouths and his thoughts, the world poured out.

First he made the sky. Then the seas. Then the land. Then the mountains and the rivers. Then he made trees, and grass, and flowers. Then he made the animals. Birds in the air. Fish in the rivers. Lions and elephants and little squirrels and tiny ants. Then he made the first humans, the first sages, the first cowherds, the first kings.

Brahma stepped back and looked at his work.

It was beautiful. It was full. It was huge.

But something was wrong.

It was completely, utterly silent.

Not a chirp. Not a song. Not a baby's cry. Not a single voice.

The trees stood. The rivers ran. The animals walked around. But none of them could speak. None of them could sing. The wind blew through the leaves and made no sound at all. The waterfalls fell without splashing. The birds opened their beaks and nothing came out.

And it was even stranger inside.

The humans Brahma had made were standing in a row, looking at each other, but they could not think clearly. Their minds were a fuzzy grey mist. They could not count. They could not remember. They could not give names to the trees they were looking at. They could not tell their parents from a stranger.

Brahma touched his four chins, one by one, with growing worry.

A world full of beings who cannot speak, cannot think, and cannot make music? That is not a world. That is just a very crowded room.