14.11.2025

S: There is a story about Ganesha’s wisdom. Would you hear it?
A: Tell.
S: Memory will have to serve. Storytelling like in the old days, with its flaws and imperfections, with its improvised nature. The retelling of the stories.
A: Save the preamble. It is me.
S: There is a conflict between the sons of the Mother Goddess. The brothers agree to traverse the universe to settle the point. The one without knowledge, he whips his way all around everywhere in feverish haste. With no thought and awareness.
A: And Ganesha?
S: I have piqued your interest, I see. Ganesha with the elephant’s wise head, he makes the circuit around the forms of the god and the Mother Goddess. This is the universe entire. And more.
A: I hear the capital in the Mother. Why never in the man?
S: She is power. I am her son and her lover. I am God myself.
A: I know what will come next. The interpretation.
S: When my grandfather would tell me the stories, he would ask me at the end what it meant. Every time I interpret something, it is the demand from my grandfather. The desire to fulfill the learning.
A: Go then.
S: The hothead, he does not know where his feet are at. But Ganesha? He knows his own origin. The Mother Goddess, she made him from the dead skin of her body that she rubbed off from her bath. His elephant’s head? It came from his father, Shiva. It is the origin that determines our journeys around the universe.
A: And what else?
S: Standing before him is the body of the Mother Goddess, radiant in its beauty. Remember, this is the idol of India, imbued with sexual passion and which arouses the desire of the son-lover, the bhakti. It is her body that stands at the center of creation. You spend your whole life circling around it to finally find your destination. The body of the Mother, that is fate. That is destiny.
A: You can never be free of the Mother?
S: Would you want to be? Without the Mother there is nothing. The non-universe. The human universe, the Indian universe, this is the Mother. She is Power. She is Love. She is Form. She is the centre and she is the periphery. She is the Inside and the Outside. Who can know her love but her son? This is wisdom.

08.11.2025

S: You know, one of my favourite authors, their parents met on the train.

A: An interestingly irrelevant fact.

S: But it is relevant. When was the last time you had even a conversation with a stranger on the train?

A: The point being?

S: Have you ever noticed how a train is laid out? The space is actually maximised so that you are facing someone. So why is it that people do not talk to others on the train? If the space is conducive to something, why is it not happening?

A: What are you trying to get at?

S: Slowly. I’ll get there. Let’s look at mobile phones and social media. All of those sites, theoretically, they are built to connect people, aren’t they? Yet, all they do is create the feeling of isolation, desolation even. Loneliness is an epidemic in our society due largely to social media. It causes jealousy, withdrawal, cyberbullying. I could go on with this list. Yet all those sites and the mobile phone itself were built to connect people. For the good of society.

A: I’m beginning to get what you’re saying.

S: Finally, let’s talk about the open plan office space or staff room. It has been built to increase connection. So that people will talk to each other. Benches in the park. But if one person sits somewhere, other people won’t sit there and talk to them. They sit by themselves. They don’t talk. The whole point of how it is built is defeated.

A: What is your conclusion about all of this?

S: It is not the spaces. It is not the inventions. It is not the communication media. It is the people that refuse to connect themselves to anyone. They want to be alone. They are blaming technology for loneliness and isolation, the spaces in society. It is them that do not want to connect. They always find an excuse not to. They have been seduced by the evils of individualism. The Western individual.

A: The thesis is interesting. But have you considered that there is a failure in the technology?

S: Yes. And that is also revealing. Because the social media sites only connect in that they control. It is a system of control that is keeping individualism alive. It is an artificial way of life imposed by the elites in this society. Not a fault but a deliberate strategy. The etiquette on the train: imposed by the elites. So that all classes of society will not mix, people from different backgrounds…

A: The night has come. Sleep beckons. Another day, another thought.