Hanuman Jayanti

Hanuman's story begins before the Ramayana itself. Anjana, a celestial apsara who had been cursed to live as a monkey on earth, performed deep penance and received a boon that her son would be an incarnation of Shiva. As King Dasharatha's sacred kheer was being distributed, a kite snatched a portion and flew over the forest, dropping it into Anjana's outstretched hands—and through the divine power of Vayu the wind god, Hanuman was born.

Born with extraordinary strength, young Hanuman saw the rising Sun and, mistaking it for a giant ripe mango, leaped into the sky to swallow it. Alarmed, Indra struck him with his thunderbolt, wounding his jaw (hanu = jaw, hence Hanuman). Vayu, furious at the injury to his child, withdrew all air from the cosmos. Life began to suffocate. Only when the gods restored Hanuman to health and bestowed immense gifts—indestructibility, strength as vast as the wind, the power to fly and shape-shift—did Vayu restore the breath of life.

In the Ramayana, Hanuman's leap across the ocean to Lanka, his discovery of Sita in Ashoka Vatika, his burning of Lanka's golden towers, and his carrying of the entire Sanjeevani mountain are eternal symbols: the mighty deeds that devotion makes possible when the self is offered completely to the divine.