India, Sept. 14 -- Today is Ganesha Chaturthi. Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, receives the first pooja, invoked before any undertaking begins, so that the path ahead is cleared before the first step is even taken. Yet the most striking story about him is not one where he clears an obstacle from someone else's path, but one where he becomes the obstacle-breaker in his own. When sage Vyasa sought a scribe to record the Mahabharata as it poured from him without pause, only Ganesha agreed, and on one condition: Vyasa must recite without ever stopping. Midway through the epic, Ganesha's pen broke. Rather than halting the sacred work, he snapped off his own tusk and continued writing, unwilling to let a personal loss interrupt something lar...