Kamadeva Burned: When Desire Meets the Real Thing

The god of desire reduced to ash

While Parvati performs her great penance to win Shiva, the devas send Kamadeva, the god of desire, to disturb his meditation. He shoots his flower-arrow. Shiva opens his third eye. The god of desire is reduced to ash in a single breath. What follows, the grief of Rati, the half-return of Kamadeva as Ananga, and a quiet teaching about what desire actually is.

A Bridge Before The Fire

This lesson takes place during Parvati's tapas, the great austerity she performs in the previous lesson to win Shiva as her husband. In the actual Puranic chronology, the events of the next chapter, Daksha's yajna and Sati's fire, come before this. We are following the thematic order of the Shiva-Shakti chapter, not the strict timeline. Parvati is now in the forest. Shiva is on his mountain. The devas, watching both, are about to make a decision they will regret.

The Devas Have A Problem

A spring afternoon at the rim of Indra's court. The sky god is pacing. A terrible asura named Tarakasura has won a boon from Brahma: he can be killed only by a son of Shiva. The problem is that Shiva has no son. Since Sati's fire, Shiva has not opened his eyes. He sits on Mount Kailasa, ash on his skin, the world beneath him forgotten.

Indra calls his counsellors. 'Parvati is performing tapas to win him,' one says. 'But Shiva does not see her. He does not see anything. We must wake him.'

A second counsellor adds the obvious: 'And the only god who can wake desire in any heart, even the heart of Mahadeva, is Kamadeva.'

The court turns to the youngest god in the room. Kamadeva, the god of desire, is beautiful, almost a boy, sugarcane bow in his hand, five flower-tipped arrows in his quiver, his wife Rati, the goddess of pleasure, beside him. He listens to the assignment. He hesitates. 'You are asking me to take aim at Shiva,' he says. 'No god has ever done this and remained.' Indra promises him the protection of all the devas. Kamadeva looks at Rati. Rati looks back at him. Some of the love stories in the Puranas end this way: with a wife knowing what is about to happen, and a husband going anyway because the devas have asked.