Delete the Gods, Delete the System
It happened in Greece. It happened in Rome. Now it's happening in India. Two generations. That's all it takes. Delete the gods, delete the operating system.
Hindu gods ran everything. Not in some vague spiritual sense. They were the actual infrastructure. You couldn't start a business without Ganesha removing obstacles or get married without Agnidev watching from the fire. The agricultural calendar moved by festival dates. Plant by Pongal. Harvest by Onam.
Delete the gods and the whole system stops making sense. The temple becomes a tourist attraction. Someone takes selfies where grandmother did pradakshina. The festival calendar that organized planting loses its grip. Farmers drift toward generic advice from an app that doesn't know this soil, this water or this exact microclimate that three hundred years of observation had mapped onto Chaitra Purnima and Aadi Amavasai.
Bharatanatyam at the local temple was once worship but today it's a cultural program at the auditorium. The music will go next. Those ragas at specific times of day mapped to cosmological understanding of time's texture but divorced from that, they'll are just pretty sounds in whatever order Spotify decides.
The joint family breaks apart when you remove what held it together: the kul devata. Once it was obvious why we were sharing a house with an uncle's family. Now it requires explanation, negotiation and arguments about property division.
The house faces east because that's where Surya rises. The kitchen is in the southeast because Agni rules there. The tulsi plant in the courtyard is Lakshmi's presence in the home. Three generations later someone's knocking down walls wondering why grandmother was so superstitious. Once the walls come down the house stops working in ways nobody can articulate.
Each thing breaks the next thing.
Something always fills the gap. Western secular individualism, consumerism or abrahamic cults. Something's going to organize your society.
There's always one generation that straddles. Grandmother at morning Tulsi puja meant it. Mother goes through the motions because grandmother expects it. The daughter rolls her eyes. Calls it patriarchy. But she won't eat before certain times on certain days. Couldn't tell you why.
The handoff is happening now. It's for you to decide if your kids will understand how any of this works.
