Janmashtami: Story of Lord Krishna birth – Old King Ugrasena of Mathura (Uttar Pradesh, India) had two children, Prince Kamsa and Princess Devaki. While King Ugrasena was a good king, Prince Kamsa was a ruthless tyrant. Now Princess Devaki was to wed a nobleman named Vasudeva. Kamsa out of the love he bore for his sister decided to be the …
Read More »Bali and Hanuman: How Hanuman saved Sugriva
Bali and Hanuman: Kishkindha was the capital of the kingdom of the monkeys ruled by King Bali. One day, a terrible fight broke out between Bali and his brother Sugriva. Bali and Hanuman: How Hanuman saved Sugriva Sugriva was so afraid of Bali that he went away to live in a hill called Rishyamukha with his minister, Hanuman. Sugriva chose …
Read More »Story behind the birth of Lord Hanuman?
The story of the birth of Lord Hanuman goes thus: Vrihaspati had an attendant called Punjikasthala, who was cursed to assume the form of a female monkey – a curse that could only be nullified if she would give birth to an incarnation of Lord Shiva. Reborn as Anjana, she performed intense austerities to please Shiva, who finally granted her …
Read More »Malachite Casket: Ural folk tale by Pavel Bazhov
Pavel Bazhov is best known for his collection of fairy tales The Malachite Box, based on Ural folklore and published in the Soviet Union in 1939. In 1944, the translation of the collection into English was published in New York City and London. Later Sergei Prokofiev created the ballet The Tale of the Stone Flower based on one of the …
Read More »Mistress Of The Copper Mountain: Pavel Bazhov
One day two of the men from our village went to take a look at the hay. Their meadows were quite a bit of a way off. Somewhere the other side of Severushka. It was a Sunday and real hot. That sort of fine weather you get after rain. Both of them worked in the mines, on Gumeshky. They got …
Read More »The Cratchits’ Christmas Dinner: Charles Dickens
Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the …
Read More »Krishna in Gokul: Lord Krishna Childhood Story
The next morning in Gokul (Uttar Pradesh, India), the word spread that Nanda had a little boy and he was named Krishna. Now Kansa knew that his would be slayer was still alive and was in Gokul, so he summoned a wicked demoness name Putana. He ordered Putana to go to Gokul and kill every baby born in the month …
Read More »Ghosts On The Verandah: Story By Ruskin Bond
Bibiji, my neighbour, a warm, attractive woman in her early thirties, is fond of odd, macabre stories, most of which have their setting in her village near Mathura (Uttar Pradesh, India). The other night Bibiji launched into an account of various types of ghosts she had known – the ghosts of immoral women – churels -who appeared naked with their …
Read More »A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens
Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement …
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