Lord of the Rings: Saturn

As a kid, i was terrified of the Shani god ( Saturn). I had heard a great deal of stories about how people suffered when they were under the baleful eye of the Lord Saturn. Pretty cool, scary stuff.Even as i type up this stuff, my hands are sweating. When i was around 13-14 years old, i was riding my bike to school. There is a temple of lord Shani (Saturn) in Adilabad (that's the pseud town i grew up). And this temple happens to be enroute. For some reason, the front handle turned and i got entangled and i fell (The fall of Totti). As i fell, i stretched out my hand to check the fall. It looked like a stupid idea afterwards, but then i was falling. I fell with my weight on my right hand. I never knew bones could do that. It was amazing and painful. Through wet eyes, i saw my hand bent and then this guy came running. He placed my bent arm on his knee and straightened it. Some people might take this as an excuse and chuck while bowling but not me :P. Anyways, through some coincidence or god knows what this happened right infront of the temple. Then on, saturdays used to be the day for shani worship. That reminds me of another coincidence. Shanivar in hindi is saturday. Shanivar means the day of shani. Saturday is the day of Saturn. I wonder if this is just a mere coincidence. Did the ancient indians know of the existence of a planet called saturn? Did they know of the rings?

The rings of saturn give it a special place in our solar system. Lots of interesting thing have come into light thanks to the cassinni-huygens telescope. Galileo was the first to one to observe saturn. Typical tam like attitude, he didnt want people to know about this till he investigated more. So, he secretly published with some anagram twist and all. Supposedly, formed from the debris of a crash with a kutty moon, this rings are extraoridnarily thin. Wafer thin.

Back to mythology, shani is the son of sun. I think he is the younger one, the elder being the great Yama, the dealer of death. Shani was cursed by the shadow of his mother. His original mother could not bear the brightness of Sun and had gone to himalayas to meditate. In her place, she left her shadow.The most famous temple of the shani lord is in a small village in Maharashtra. The place is kind of wealthy but none of the houses have doors nor locks. Mysterious things, supposedly, have happened to thieves.

Finally, once there was a king. One day, goddess Lakshmi (for wealth) and Lord Shani came to meet him together. They asked him,"Whom do you like the best?". Before he could say,"Both!", he saw their jaws set. He knew he could'nt get away with such silly answers and that the gods meant business. Luckily, he was smart.