One day Parvati got bored and begged Shiva to entertain her. So he told her a story, the world’s first story. This story was told in a secret cave somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas. The plot would have been lost in the snow but for a tiny bird that survives in that cold desolate landscape.

This bird shared the story with a fish. The fish shared it with a Gandharva who shared it with the Yaksha. Much may have been lost in translation for by the time the story reached humanity, it was not one but hundreds of stories with myriad plots and characters, with amazing twists and turns. It was called the Brhadkatha, or the vast story. Later it was called the Katha-sarit-sagar, the ocean of stories. There were stories within stories, like whirpools of thought, sucking everyone in and then spitting them out.