and what a Chief Belief Officer is supposed to do,

you have to hear a story

of Ganesha,

the elephant-headed god

who is the scribe of storytellers,

and his brother,

the athletic warlord of the gods,

Kartikeya.

The two brothers one day decided to go on a race,

three times around the world.

Kartikeya leapt on his peacock

and flew around the continents

and the mountains and the oceans.

He went around once,

he went around twice,

he went around thrice.

But his brother, Ganesha,

simply walked around his parents

once, twice, thrice,

and said, "I won."

"How come?" said Kartikeya.

And Ganesha said,

"You went around 'the world.'

I went around 'my world.'"

What matters more?

If you understand the difference between 'the world' and 'my world,'

you understand the difference between logos and mythos.

'The world' is objective,

logical, universal, factual,

scientific.

'My world' is subjective.

It's emotional. It's personal.

It's perceptions, thoughts, feelings, dreams.

It is the belief system that we carry.

It's the myth that we live in.

'The world' tells us how the world functions,

how the sun rises,

how we are born.

'My world' tells us why the sun rises,

why we were born.

Every culture is trying to understand itself:

"Why do we exist?"

And every culture comes up with its own understanding of life,

its own customized version of mythology.

Culture is a reaction to nature,

and this understanding of our ancestors

is transmitted generation from generation

in the form of stories, symbols and rituals,

which are always indifferent to rationality.

And so, when you study it, you realize

that different people of the world

have a different understanding of the world.

Different people see things differently --

different viewpoints.

There is my world and there is your world,

and my world is always better than your world,

because my world, you see, is rational

and yours is superstition.

Yours is faith.

Yours is illogical.

This is the root of the clash of civilizations.

It took place, once, in 326 B.C.

on the banks of a river called the Indus,

now in Pakistan.

This river lends itself to India's name.

India. Indus.

Alexander, a young Macedonian,

met there what he called a "gymnosophist,"

which means "the naked, wise man."

We don't know who he was.

Perhaps he was a Jain monk,

like Bahubali over here,

the Gomateshwara Bahubali

whose image is not far from Mysore.

Or perhaps he was just a yogi

who was sitting on a rock, staring at the sky

and the sun and the moon.

Alexander asked, "What are you doing?"

and the gymnosophist answered,

"I'm experiencing nothingness."

Then the gymnosophist asked,

"What are you doing?"

and Alexander said, "I am conquering the world."

And they both laughed.

Each one thought that the other was a fool.

The gymnosophist said, "Why is he conquering the world?

It's pointless."

And Alexander thought,

"Why is he sitting around, doing nothing?

What a waste of a life."

To understand this difference in viewpoints,

we have to understand

the subjective truth of Alexander --

his myth, and the mythology that constructed it.

Alexander's mother, his parents, his teacher Aristotle

told him the story of Homer's "Iliad."

They told him of a great hero called Achilles,

who, when he participated in battle, victory was assured,

but when he withdrew from the battle,

defeat was inevitable.

"Achilles was a man who could shape history,

a man of destiny,

and this is what you should be, Alexander."

That's what he heard.

"What should you not be?

You should not be Sisyphus,

who rolls a rock up a mountain all day

only to find the boulder rolled down at night.

Don't live a life which is monotonous,

mediocre, meaningless.

Be spectacular! --

like the Greek heroes,

like Jason, who went across the sea

with the Argonauts and fetched the Golden Fleece.

Be spectacular like Theseus,

who entered the labyrinth and killed the bull-headed Minotaur.

When you play in a race, win! --

because when you win, the exhilaration of victory

is the closest you will come to the ambrosia of the gods."

Because, you see, the Greeks believed

you live only once,

and when you die, you have to cross the River Styx.

And if you have lived an extraordinary life,

you will be welcomed to Elysium,

or what the French call "Champs-Élysées" --

(Laughter) --

the heaven of the heroes.

But these are not the stories that the gymnosophist heard.

He heard a very different story.

He heard of a man called Bharat,

after whom India is called Bhārata.

Bharat also conquered the world.

And then he went to the top-most peak

of the greatest mountain of the center of the world

called Meru.

And he wanted to hoist his flag to say,

"I was here first."

But when he reached the mountain peak,

he found the peak covered with countless flags

of world-conquerors before him,

each one claiming "'I was here first' ...

that's what I thought until I came here."

And suddenly, in this canvas of infinity,

Bharat felt insignificant.

This was the mythology of the gymnosophist.

You see, he had heroes, like Ram -- Raghupati Ram

and Krishna, Govinda Hari.

But they were not two characters on two different adventures.

They were two lifetimes of the same hero.

When the Ramayana ends the Mahabharata begins.

When Ram dies, Krishna is born.

When Krishna dies, eventually he will be back as Ram.

You see, the Indians also had a river

that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead.

But you don't cross it once.

You go to and fro endlessly.

It was called the Vaitarani.

You go again and again and again.

Because, you see,

nothing lasts forever in India, not even death.

And so, you have these grand rituals

where great images of mother goddesses are built

and worshiped for 10 days ...

And what do you do at the end of 10 days?

You dunk it in the river.

Because it has to end.

And next year, she will come back.

What goes around always comes around,

and this rule applies not just to man,

but also the gods.

You see, the gods

have to come back again and again and again

as Ram, as Krishna.

Not only do they live infinite lives,

but the same life is lived infinite times

till you get to the point of it all.

"Groundhog Day."

(Laughter)

Two different mythologies.

Which is right?

Two different mythologies, two different ways of looking at the world.

One linear, one cyclical.

One believes this is the one and only life.

The other believes this is one of many lives.

And so, the denominator of Alexander's life was one.

So, the value of his life was the sum total

of his achievements.

The denominator of the gymnosophist's life was infinity.

So, no matter what he did,

it was always zero.

And I believe it is this mythological paradigm

that inspired Indian mathematicians

to discover the number zero.

Who knows?

And that brings us to the mythology of business.

If Alexander's belief influenced his behavior,

if the gymnosophist's belief influences his behavior,

then it was bound to influence the business they were in.

You see, what is business

but the result of how the market behaves

and how the organization behaves?

And if you look at cultures around the world,

all you have to do is understand the mythology

and you will see how they behave and how they do business.

Take a look.

If you live only once, in one-life cultures around the world,

you will see an obsession with binary logic,

absolute truth, standardization,

absoluteness, linear patterns in design.

But if you look at cultures which have cyclical

and based on infinite lives, you will see a comfort with fuzzy logic,

with opinion,

with contextual thinking,

with everything is relative, sort of --

(Laughter)

mostly.

(Laughter)

You look at art. Look at the ballerina,

how linear she is in her performance.

And then look at the Indian classical dancer,

the Kuchipudi dancer, the Bharatanatyam dancer,

curvaceous.

(Laughter)

And then look at business.

Standard business model:

vision, mission, values, processes.

Sounds very much like the journey through

the wilderness to the promised land,

with the commandments held by the leader.

And if you comply, you will go to heaven.

But in India there is no "the" promised land.

There are many promised lands,

depending on your station in society,

depending on your stage of life.

You see, businesses are not run as institutions,

by the idiosyncrasies of individuals.

It's always about taste.

It's always about my taste.

You see, Indian music, for example,

does not have the concept of harmony.

There is no orchestra conductor.

There is one performer standing there, and everybody follows.

And you can never replicate that performance twice.

It is not about documentation and contract.

It's about conversation and faith.

It's not about compliance. It's about setting,

getting the job done, by bending or breaking the rules --

just look at your Indian people around here,

you'll see them smile; they know what it is.

(Laughter)

And then look at people who have done business in India,

you'll see the exasperation on their faces.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

You see, this is what India is today. The ground reality

is based on a cyclical world view.

So, it's rapidly changing, highly diverse,

chaotic, ambiguous, unpredictable.