Once upon a Time...

"
Once upon a time, there lived a great great sage, in the middle of the forest with all the lovely trees around him. He was a great archer. He had a beautiful wife. His wife was a great athlete... pre PT Usha types.

So as it used to happen this sage used to shoot an arrow, and then his wife used to run and get it back. That is why sage had only one arrow, because he did not need another one. He used to shoot and his wife used to run and get it back.

Now as it happened, one day his wife went after the arrow but did not come back for long. Sage was getting very worried and angry. His wife was very beautiful so he was getting suspicious. Finally very late in the evening she arrived. Sage asked her very angrily "Where have you been, it is almost night?", she said "Dont get angry at me, get angry at the sun, because it was so hot that my feet burnt, my face burnt and I got tired and fell down. Only after the sun went down I could do my work".

Not this sage got very angry. He knew that right in the middle of the day sun stopped for a second. And he said "I am going to teach a lesson to Sun, tomorrow at afternoon am going to shoot the sun down."

Having heard of this all the gods got very disturbed, because the sage was the greatest of archers and he was quite capable to shooting the sun down. So they began to worry. Next day sage took bath did his morning pooja and got ready to shoot the sun.

Gods came and requested him not to do this, because that would destroy the earth, but he was very angry "Sun has troubled my wife and am going to teach him a lesson"

That is when one of the Gods came and gave him an umbrella and a pair of slippers and he told the great sage "Instead of shooting down the sun, why dont you gift these to your wife"

That is how umbrella and slippers came in to existence.
"

I happened to attend one of the seminars of guy called Devdutt Pattaniak . This story was narrated then. Devdutt is a medical doctor by education, marketing manager by presentation and a mythologist by passion (that is what his website says). What I know about this guy is that he is a fantastic story teller. He made a two hour presentation, explaning the relevance of Mythology in todays corporate scenario. I liked the way he put the analogy, it was very new and innovative some of the things were far fetched, but it was full of all this kinds of story, that made it very pleasurable to sit up and listen to him, that too right after heavy lunch.

For example the above story says, "Instead of changing the world change yourself, or rather Adapt to changing world"

Anyways, his website has some nice interesting stories, take a peek. And keep his name in mind, next time he has a presentation somewhere please attend it.