Ganesha's Secret: Food alone does not satisfy hunger

On this Ganesh Chathurti or Ganpati, as the festival is popularly known in Maharashtra, Devdutt Pattanaik in this extract from 7 Secrets of Shiva, narrates several stories about Ganesha’s birth -- the one in which Shiva beheads him; when Shiva and Shakti make love taking the form of elephants; when Shiva creates a child of his own image for His wife’s pleasure but since he looks too much like the father, Shakti replaces his head with that of an elephant. A perfect obeisance to a God who is worshipped across India as the ‘remover of obstacles’ during the ten-day festival which is celebrated with much gusto.