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person whom he later identified as a gymnosophist: a naked thinker, sitting on a rock staring into space. Alexander asked him what he was doing. The gymnosophist replied, "Experiencing nothingness. What about you?" Alexander said he was conquering the world. Both laughed. Each one thought the other was a fool.
    But while the gymnosophist would have allowed Alexander to stay the fool and discover wisdom eventually, at his own pace, on his own terms, Alexander would have wanted the gymnosophist to change, not waste his life without a goal, for the gymnosophist believed that we live infinite lives while Alexander believed we live only one.

    Belief in rebirth is what defines the Indian way, and distinguishes it from both the Western and the Chinese way. Faith in rebirth has huge implications.
     
Rebirth means the denominator of your life is not one but infinity. When you live only once the value of life is the sum total of achievements, but when you live infinite lives, no matter what we achieve, its value is zero. The point then is not to control life but to understand it, not achieve but introspect.
Rebirth means that birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. The events of past lives impact the present while the events of the present life will impact the future. A child is born with karmic baggage, and not in innocence with a clean slate. Every experience, good or bad, is a reaction to past conduct either of this or a previous life. It means we alone are responsible for all that has happened to us, is happening to us and will happen to us; blaming others is not an option, nor is complacency.
Rebirth demands we accept the existence of infinitely diverse, even paradoxical, contexts existing simultaneously as well as sequentially. Everyone sees the world differently. Everyone's perspectives are bound to change over time. It means allowing for intellectual, emotional and material variety, for depending on karmic baggage, different people will have different fortunes, opportunities, capacities and capabilities.
    Belief in multiple lives establishes a worldview that is comfortable with the absence of binary logic, where there are no fixed goals, continuously changing plans, dependence on relationships, celebration of trust and loyalty, uneasiness with rules, actions dependent on crisis, preference for short-term results over long-term vision, and a reliance on resourcefulness that gives rise to contextual, non-replicable improvizations: the jugaad. This is the Indian way.
A European food company that had made high-end cuisine accessible to the common man entered India, determined to provide the same service and product to customers in a new market. But then they realized most Indians do not eat beef and pork. And what was a common man's budget in Europe was a rich man's budget in India, especially since the restaurants could be housed only in the more affluent quarters of major Indian cities. What was food for the commoner in Europe became food for the elite in India.

    Western ideas, be they Greek or biblical, had their origin in cities such as Athens, Babylon, Jerusalem and later, Paris, Berlin and London. Chinese ideas reveal a preference for cities such as the Forbidden City of the Dragon Emperor that offers the promise of greater order. Indian thought springs from villages on the fertile riverbanks of the Indian subcontinent where change takes time, like lentils boiling over a slow fire fuelled by cowdung cakes.

    India is relatively isolated from the rest of the world thanks to the mountains in the north and the sea in the south. These barriers have been penetrated primarily by trade routes and occasionally by invaders. More people came in than went out. The spices and textiles of India were sought all over the world; what Indians sought was only gold, earning the reputation of being the gold-eating gold sparrow, or sone ki chidiya.
    With prosperity came the cities of the Indus valley, of the Mauryas, Guptas,