Among the most widely told stories about Shani's dreaded gaze concerns not an enemy but a child of Shiva and Parvati. Invited, in one common version of the tale, to view the newborn Ganesha, Shani hung back, reluctant, because he knew his stare brought harm, but Parvati, proud and insistent, pressed him to look upon her son; when he did, his gaze burned the infant's head to ash.
In the grief that followed, Vishnu flew out on Garuda and returned with the head of the first creature he met sleeping with its head to the north, an elephant, which was fixed onto the child's body and brought him back to life as Ganesha, the elephant headed god. The story is told across many regional tellings with differing details, some blaming a curse on Shani himself for a past offense rather than simple bad luck, and it functions less as an accusation against Shani than as an origin myth explaining why prudent worshippers still take care, even now, about the order in which they view a newborn or a new undertaking. The tale also ties Shani into the family of Surya more broadly: he is a half-brother of Yama, the lord of the dead, and of the river-goddess Yamuna, both also children of Surya by different wives, so that the Navagraha's stern disciplinarian and the god who judges the dead are, in the mythology, kin rather than merely allies within an abstract system of cosmic order.