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 »Birth of Lord Ganesha and Creation of Elephant Head
Birth of Lord Ganesha: Lord Ganesh is the son of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati. The story of creation of Ganesh is a very fascinating one. Long time ago when Lord Shiva, was away fighting for the gods, the lady of the house, Goddess Parvati was alone at home. On one occasion, she needed someone to guard the house when …
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 »Bert’s Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving Short Stories
Bert’s Thanksgiving: Thanksgiving Short Stories – At noon on a dreary November day, a lonesome little fellow stood at the door of a cheap restaurant in Boston, and offered a solitary copy of a morning paper for sale to the people passing. But there were really not many people passing, for it was Thanksgiving Day, and the shops were closed, …
Read More »Remotely Thanksgiving: Humorous Short Story
Remotely Thanksgiving: Humorous Short Story – “Jessie are you sure you don’t know where the TV remote is, Bob asked her for the hundredth time, it was sitting here on the coffee table this afternoon.” Bob’s eldest daughter Jessie was quietly watching her favorite TV program. She looked up, scrunched up her face, shrugged her shoulders and turned back to …
Read More »First Thanksgiving: Children’s Thanksgiving story
First Thanksgiving: After landing in Plymouth*, the Pilgrims had to struggle to survive through their first wretched and miserable winter in Massachusetts. When spring and summer came it was a welcome relief. They learned so many things that first year. They had planted and cared for their first fields of corn. They had found wild strawberries in the meadows, raspberries …
Read More »A Lantern As Big As A House: Sybil Wettasinghe
The festival of Vesak takes place in May, at a time when the full moon seems to shine with special brightness and splendor. It is a feast in honor of the Lord Buddha, and people’s hearts are filled with fervor as they flock to their temples to honor him. They bring offerings of milk-and-rice gruel and long thin sticks of …
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 …
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