Skirmish of Saraswati and Lakshmi
We have grown up being told Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) and Saraswati (goddess of knowledge) always fight and avoid staying in the same place. This is based on the observation that rich businessmen tend to be uneducated (both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college dropouts, we are repeatedly told) and educated people tend to be poor (the eternally groaning and abused middle class). This is also based on the assumption that Saraswati is the goddess of education, learning and training. This understanding of Saraswati is rather pedestrian, and lacks insight. The word Saraswati stems from the Sanskrit root ‘saras’ which means that which is fluid and can be either contained in a lake (sarovar) and made to flow as in a river (sarita). It refers to imagination, the one faculty that separates man from beasts. Yes, one can argue, dolphins do imagine, as do apes but nothing in the human scale. Human imagination is what enables humans to envisage future problems, hence innovate, invent, a...