Parvati determined to change the world situation by matching sira in meditation. Aloof, alone, indrawin into her soul, she too fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four additional great fires, to each of the four quarters. The handsome body shriveled to a brittle construction fo bones, the skin became leathery and hard. Her hairs stood matted and wild. The soft liquid eyes burned.
One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture.
“My desire,” she replied, “is a god of destruction. Sira is the World Annhialator. Sira’s delight is to meditate in the burial grounds amidst the reek of corpses; there he beholds the rot of death and that is congenial to his devastating heart. Sira’s garlands are of living serpents. Sira is a pauper, furthermore, and no one knows anything of his birth.”
The virgin said, “He is beyond the mind of such as you. A pauper, but the fountainhead of wealth; terrifying but the source of grace; snake-harlands or jewel-garlands he can assume or put off at will. How should he have been born, when he is the creator of the uncreated. Sira is my love.”
The youth thereupon put away his disguise - and was Sira.
-Kalidesa, Kumarasamibhavam: The Birth of the War God Kumara
