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was under water. Alarmed at that, the king assembled all the people and ordered them to put up bunds around the river. For that purpose, he ordered every citizen to do a certain amount of work with the threat of dire consequences, should they fail to do their allotted work.
There was in Madurai an old woman by name 'Pittuvani Ammaiyar'. She was a pious devotee of Lord Siva. She was living alone earning her livelihood by daily preparing and selling ‘Pittu (Pittu is sweetened powdered rice pressed into conical shapes). She had no one to do her allotted work on the river bund nor had she the money to hire a person to do it. She was therefore greatly worried and cried. “Iswara! What shall I do?” Seeing her helplessness, Iswara came there in the guise of a coolie, with a spade on his shoulder, and called out, “Granny, granny, do you want a coolie?” “Yes”, she said, “But I do not have even a paisa in my hand to pay you. What to do?” He said, “I do not want any money and would be satisfied if you gave me a little Pittu to eat. I shall then do the allotted work on the river bund.”
Pleased with that offer, she began making Pittu, but they did not come out in full shape but were broken. Surprised at this she gave all the bits to the coolie. He ate as many of them as he could and went away saying that he would attend to the bund-raising work. Surprisingly, the dough with the old woman remained intact even though she had prepared and given bits of the Pittu to the coolie. The coolie went to the work-spot but instead of doing the work lay down there idly coming in the way of others doing their work.
The king went round to inspect the progress of the work and found that the portion allotted to Ammaiyar remained unattended to. On enquiry, his servants told him all about the pranks of that coolie. The king got infuriated, called the coolie and said, “Instead of doing the allotted work, you are lying down and singing”. So saying, he hit the coolie on the back
