Story Number 44

Hayavadana

Do you know what Hayavadana means?.... No? It means Horse-face and this story is about a man called Hayavadana, who unfortunately had the body and voice of a human but had the head of a horse. Why did he have this infliction? Let me explain...

It is said that long ago in a little village near the South of India called Dharmapuram lived a horse-headed man called Hayavadana. Now Hayavadana wasn't from Dharmapuram this is just where he ended up, no one actually knew where he was from, people say that he travelled around the whole of India crying and crying and crying. The reason why Hayavadana travelled around the whole of India was because he was searching for someone who could remove this dreaded horses head and the reason why he cried is because no one could help him. Whenever he asked someone for help they either laughed, cried, shouted or ran away. Some people would ask him how it happened, they would ask "Was it a curse of some Rishi?" or "was it some holy place of pilgrimage, a punyasthana, which you desecrated?" or "did you insult a pativrata, dedicated to the service of her husband?" Although these might seem like logical reasons for why someone might have a horses head and a humans body, but they were wrong. Hayavadana had done none of these things and the fact that no one  could understand his problem made him very unhappy. Hayavadana asked everyone: magicians, mendicants, maharshis, fakirs, saints and even sadhus - sadhus with long hair, sadhus with short, sadhus with beards, sadhus in saffron, hanging, singing, rotating, gyrating. He had tried them all. Hayavadana was fed up, so he cried all the way to Dharmapuram hoping to find the answer. Hayavadana had heard that there was a Bhagavata there, a Bhagavata is the worshipper of the adorable one Krishna, and with all the Bhagavata's kindness and punya hayavadana thought surely he would be able to help him, but................................ 

If you want to find out whether the Bhagavata helped Hayavadana or not, you will have to wait until the Fairlop Fair!