Sudekshana

 According to Legend, when the monkeys were doing there job, Lakshmana who came there asked Rama why only the two monkeys Nalan and Neelan were entrusted to throw the stones and not the others. Rama told Lakshmana to hear the story behind this from Hanuman. So Lakshmana goes to Hanuman who reveals the says that whatever is thrown into the water by these two monkeys will float. Surprised, Lakshmana asks how these two got such a boon and from whom. Hanuman says it was not a boon but a curse and retells the following story.

Once there was a hermit by name Sudekshana. He regularly did puja using ‘Salagramam’ (shiny pebbles from the river bed, which is used to pray to Shiva) and he kept them in a box. One day after a bath in the river, he came looking for these but the box was empty. He searched everywhere but could not find them. Meanwhile, he looked inside his water pot and found that it was empty, so he went to fetch water. There lying in a small puddle of water were the stones. He thanked the almighty for showing him the stones and resumed his ritual.

After a few days when he was getting ready for his morning rituals, he heard a noise of pots and pans rolling inside his house. He rushed inside to find Nalan and Neelan playing with his stones and the box lying open in front of them. As soon as they saw him they ran out with the stones and threw them in the water. The hermit searched for the stones in the water and got them out.

The monkeys continued this way and the hermit thought that he should do something about it. But he couldn’t punish these monkeys who didn’t know what they were doing. So when the next time they were running with the stones, he called out a curse to them saying “Whatever you throw into the water will not drown but float.”

Nalan and Neelan were the ones who were cursed by Sudekshana, so we are taking there help, concluded Hanuman. So according to the advice of Hanuman the rest of the monkeys brought rocks to the two monkeys waiting at the waterfront. Nalan and Neelan then threw the stones into the water by which the bridge was built.