Hemamali of Alkapuri
In the golden city of Alkapuri upon Mount Kailasa dwelt Kuvera, the yaksha-king of wealth, who worshipped Bhagwan Shankara daily with fresh lotuses drawn from Manasarovar. His chief mali was Hemamali — a yaksha of great skill and unmatched devotion — whose duty was to bring those lotuses before the appointed brahma-muhurat hour of Kuvera's pooja. His young wife Vishalakshi was the beauty of the yaksha realm, and Hemamali's attachment to her was total.
The morning that lotuses wilted
One day, having brought the lotuses from Manasarovar at first light, Hemamali stopped at his own house for a moment with Vishalakshi — and that moment turned into a prahara, and that prahara into half the day. The lotuses in his basket, cut and untouched, wilted in the mountain sun. When at last he arrived in Kuvera's darbar, the pooja hour had long passed and the flowers he laid before the yaksha-king were limp and brown-edged.
Kuvera's curse
Kuvera, seeing the insult to his Shiva-pooja and reading Hemamali's mind through his yaksha-drishti, rose in cold anger. He said: 'You have chosen the moha of your wife's company over the seva of Mahadeva. May that moha be broken — be separated at once from Vishalakshi, and fall to the earth as a leper, that all the world may see what attachment costs.' Hemamali fell from Alkapuri that very hour; his golden yaksha-body dissolved into a wasted human form covered in the sores of leprosy, and he wandered the Himalayan foothills in agony, unable even to eat what strangers threw him.
The ashram of Markandeya
After long wandering he crawled at last to the ashram of the deathless Rishi Markandeya. Markandeya read the whole story in tapa-drishti and said, 'The moha that struck you can only be undone by the vrat which the shastra names as its very cure. The Ashadha Krishna Ekadashi that approaches is Yogini — she who joins back what moha has severed. Fast the day, keep jagran with Vishnu Sahasranama, and take only tulsi at Dwadashi parana.' Hemamali observed the vrat with tears that washed his ruined body more than any Ganga snana had done.
The return to Alkapuri
As the Dwadashi sun rose, the sores dissolved one by one like dew before the light; his lost golden yaksha-body returned; and a divine vimana descended from Kuvera's own throne to bring him back. Kuvera himself received him at the gate of Alkapuri, embraced him, and returned him to Vishalakshi with the words, 'The vrat has taught you what my curse could only begin. From today, whoever anywhere in the three lokas suffers leprosy or any skin-affliction born of moha shall have this vrat as their remedy.'
"Removes leprosy and every skin disease born of shraap or unresolved karma; releases from curses; and grants merit equal to feeding 88,000 Brahmins on a single day. Especially prescribed where illness has followed a moral lapse."