1n On #GaneshaChaturthi I want you to ponder on why we celebrate & worship the elephant. On one hand they’re the cutest, smartest & most affable animals you’ll meet. OTOH they are fearsome when angry & quick to attack. No natural predator dares mess with them

2n This shows you that calmness & affability are great qualities when you’re strong & requires frequent demonstrations of strength. This is something India has forgotten & we use our passivity to hide our weakness. Nobody respects the weak. Now look at the elephant’s trunk

3n it is an exquisite tool - blunt enough to uproot a tree & yet delicate enough to pick & tear a single blade of grass. It has power, yet it has the wisdom to use this wisely and appropriately. In that sense the elephant is the distillate of Shankaracharya’s VivekaChudamani

4n in some variations of the Ganesha story, his wives are siddhi (enlightenment), buddhi (intellect) and/or riddhi (wealth), meaning that you can only get these through strength & wisdom working in tandem, that an elephant personifies. Ganesha’s fierce loyalty to

5n his mother Parvati (for which he lost his head) & his circumambulation of his parents as his whole world (in his race with Karthikeya) show you deference to the matriarchal structure of elephant society & putting your family first. This was the kind of exquisite nuance our

6n culture was once capable of, explaining complex, nuanced, spiritual, philosophical & state concepts in a living anthropomorphic example. Today we’re a sad pathetic shadow of ourself - neither strength nor wisdom nor wealth nor power & use “Vasudaiva Kutumbakam” to hide

7n our impotence. Today when you worship Ganesha, introspect on what he means & where we went so horribly wrong as a society and as a country..... and remember while you’re being serious, Ganesha also wants you to have fun - so eat lots of laddus while introspecting