At one time on this planet, there were only fish, animals, birds and insects, and one of the animals looked like humans, yet they were not different from the other animals. They were all fighting and killing and eating one another and that made God very unhappy.

God called a meeting of all his angels, and asked for their advice. It was decided to create a loving, thoughtful and disciplined creature and call it a human being.

One morning God decided to follow the Sun with a bag full of the seeds that would change human like animals into real human beings.

God picked up a country on earth that had the highest mountain, which happened to be India. God chose the best attributes from his bag of Feelings, Love, Passion, and Devotion, and God continued showering these gifts until He reached Greece. The Greeks had already heard of
God’s coming and his gifts, so they set up a welcome party and consulted among themselves, what gifts to ask from God. God was very pleased by their efforts. The Greeks thought that they were of different race from the dark people to the East and the South, so they deserved something special. After listening to their requests and a little bit of thinking, God said, “I shall give you the best attribute that I have got, ‘Thinking, Dialogue & Logic’. With these attributes, you will create new ideas, theories; to be followed by all of your kind.”

God also warned that they should not expect all humans on the planet to follow their theories, especially the people he had already given the Feelings and Passion. God also added, “When you do not obey my advice there will be destruction on this planet.”

Before God continued on his journey around the planet, there was a delegation from Africa, urging Him not to ignore them. God said, “You have traveled far and I have to give you something which you have already shown to me, the ‘Strength’, physical strength.” God assured them that no other people will be able to match them; as a result women from all the continents would secretly long for you.

The Sun had already reached the other side of the planet, shining on Japan and China and other countries of the East; God just managed to catch up and saw that the Japanese were a very different race. God was running out of attributes/gifts to distribute, but while he was thinking hard to find a new attribute he noticed that these people were verypolite and waiting patiently on their knees.

God said, “I shall give you something no other people have, ‘Discipline and Dedication’.”
God added that with these two attributes you will be known all over the planet, you would work hard to make these attributes perfect. The most obedient people have since been working hard and making everything perfect.

Part II
When I was attending St. Martin’s School of Art in London one of our lecturers used to take our weekly seminars where he would bring his written papers and read to our Post-Grad class. These discussions were very varied, since almost half the students came from other countries, among which were French, German, Turkish, Japanese, Singaporean and an Indian as well, so it was very interesting how, at the beginning of the year, all the foreign students kept a low key in discussions as a sign of politeness and most of the British students would tow the line of the paper’s presenter.

One afternoon the presented paper’s title was ‘SCULPTURE IS A THING’ and the learned presenter spoke for over an hour about the ‘thingness’ of the sculpture. Some of the foreign students were getting edgy. What I discovered for the first time in my life was that as long as I
was listening to the speaker I was following the argument, but at the end of the reading if someone had asked me what the paper was about, there was nothing I could remember.

So I faced the lecturer, told him politely, that his arguments in the paper were like sand, that just filtered through my fingers and I was left with nothing to hold on to. Normally when one listens to someone’s argument for over an hour, whether one has agreed with speaker’s point
of view or not, you at least knew what the argument was about? However, in this case, there was nothing I could hold onto from the ‘thingness’ of the sculpture.

In India, where I grew up, when some one expounded upon something very abstract, such as TRUTH or HONESTY, it was mostly illustrated with a story. At the end of the story the core idea became evident as a shining pearl, as if it had just popped out of its shell, and was now sitting in full daylight on your palm. It would always leave you amazed at why you did not find this pearl before.


Our learned lecturer very firmly told me that was not how things are done in Europe, “You are after pearls of wisdom, but we only use logic to build an argument. We do not need to be passionate about these things. After all “Sculpture is only a Thing”.