Lord Ganesh and Moon's waxing and waning

On a bright full moon day Lord Ganesh was travelling on his mushak (mouse) after a delicious meal.During the course of his travel his path crossed with a snake, the mushak got scared Of the snake and dropped Lord Ganesh  and ran away.Due to this, the ladoo also fell down and Lord Ganesh started picking those up ladoo but it was a tedious task fo him after eating a delicious Meal as his big belly had swollen up .

Lord Ganesh asked mushak about this scene and he told that was frightened by the snake hence he tied the snake around the his belly .All of these incident was seen by the moon and he started making fun of Lord Ganesh’s physical features.This triggered Lord Ganesh’s anger as moon is a god himself and people look upto so him cracking a joke about someone’s physical features isn’t graceful.So, to teach him a lesson Lord Ganesh cursed him that he would lose all his brightness as he was boasty about it .

Soon Moon Lost all his brightness and he was guilty about what he just did and started pleading Lord Ganesh for mercy but Lord Ganesh was in no mood to forgive him.Then Mushak intervened and explained Lord Ganesh that night would get more dark without moon’s light and asked him to forgive moon .After mushak’s advice and moon’s constant plea Lord Ganesh Decided to forgive moon and explained him that he shouldn’t be making fun of someone’s physicality as people look upto him .Since the curse was given , it couldn’t be taken back completely Hence Lord Ganesh suggested rectification that moon brightness would come and go by small amount on different days.This lead to moon’s waxing and waning process.