रुद्राणां शङ्करश्चास्मि वित्तेशो यक्षरक्षसाम्।वसूनां पावकश्चास्मि मेरुः शिखरिणामहम्॥
rudrāṇāṃ śaṅkaraś cāsmi vitteśo yakṣa-rakṣasāmvasūnāṃ pāvakaś cāsmi meruḥ śikhariṇām aham
Word by word
The verse says
Among the Rudras I am Śiva. Among the spirits of wealth, Kubera. Among the Vasus I am fire — and among mountains, Meru.
In plain words
Four more, and one of them is odd company for the others.
Śiva, Kubera, Meru: gods and a cosmic mountain.
And fire, which is in every kitchen in the world.
Where you've felt this · in creative work
A cook will tell you the three expensive things in her kitchen — the copper pan, the knife she saved for, the oven. Then she will mention the flame, which costs nothing and is not an object, and without which the other three are furniture.
Going deeper
Fire sitting among gods and mountains is the kind of detail that is easy to read past.
The Vasus are a class of deities and fire is named as the chief of them, so formally it belongs. But fire is also the one item in this verse that an ordinary person deals with daily, and the one that is a process rather than a thing. You cannot keep fire the way you keep a mountain. It has to be fed, and it ends.
That pattern — the enormous and the domestic in the same breath — is how this chapter keeps the reader from drifting.
And it quietly refuses a distinction people make without noticing. The sacred mountain and the flame under the evening meal are being named by the same sentence, with the same word, and nothing in the verse suggests one is a lesser instance than the other.