When Rama’s army reached the shore of the southern sea, an impossible labour began: a bridge to Lanka, a hundred yojanas across the water. The vanaras threw themselves into the work with the joy of those who labour for someone they love. Mighty Nala, gifted in building, directed them; monkeys and bears uprooted whole hills, carried boulders on their shoulders, and flung trees and stones into the waves, where — marked with Rama’s name — they floated. The noise was tremendous; the sight was like mountains learning to swim.
And in the middle of all this thunder, there was a squirrel. She was small even for a squirrel, and she had watched the great work from a rock, her heart aching to help. She could not lift a pebble the vanaras would even notice. But she could do this: she rolled in the wet sand at the water’s edge until her fur was covered with grains, ran out along the causeway, and shook herself — letting her little cargo of sand fall into the cracks between the great stones. Then she ran back and did it again. And again. All day.
Some of the vanaras began to laugh. What was this mite doing underfoot while giants worked? One of them, impatient, scooped her aside — gently enough by his measure, roughly by hers. "Little one, stay clear! This is work for the strong. Your sand is nothing."
The squirrel picked herself up, hurt but unwavering, and went back for more sand. And Rama, who misses nothing that is done in love, had seen it all.
He stopped the work. Before the whole astonished army, the Lord of the worlds bent down and lifted the tiny creature onto his palm, holding her against his cheek. "Never call any service small," he said to his warriors. "You bring your strength; she brings her whole heart. Her grains of sand bind your boulders together — and devotion like hers binds this bridge more surely than stone. The worth of an offering is not in its size, but in its love."
Then, with great tenderness, Rama stroked the squirrel’s back with his fingers. And where his fingers passed, three pale stripes appeared in her fur — marks of the Lord’s own hand.
Squirrels in India carry those stripes to this day, and grandparents point them out to children as the story is told: look, there is the signature of Rama, left on the smallest of his servants. No act of love is ever too little. The bridge to every great thing is built of boulders and of sand.