Vana

The most famous diagram in India.

Nine triangles lock around one central point and form 43 smaller triangles, in five concentric levels. Temples carry it, and so do the three-dimensional
mountain versions called Meru.

It is one of the most studied pieces of geometry in Indian art, and every line has its place. Trace it from the dot outward and you see why people have kept redrawing it for centuries.

Every Indian start begins here.

Almost everything in India starts with Ganesha: weddings, shop openings, new notebooks, the first page of an account book. He is the remover of obstacles
and the patron of writing itself.

The story behind him is a race. His brother Kartikeya set off to circle the whole world. Ganesha simply walked around his parents and said they were his world, and won. Cleverness over speed.

Lakshmi brings it. Kubera keeps it.

Indian stories give wealth two characters: Lakshmi, who brings it, and Kubera, who keeps it. He is the treasurer of the gods and the guardian of the north.

He ruled the golden city of Lanka until his half-brother Ravana threw him out and took his flying chariot. So he built a new city, Alaka, near Kailash. "Kubera's treasure" is still how Indians describe a fortune.

Prosperity arrives after the hard part.

In the churning of the ocean, gods and demons spend a thousand years pulling a serpent around a mountain. The ocean first gives up poison, then fourteen
treasures. Lakshmi comes last.

The moral is one every Indian business family knows: prosperity arrives late, after the hard part. Every Diwali, shops open fresh account books with her name on the first page.

The river that became an idea.

Her earliest appearance is as a river in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest texts in the world. Over the centuries she became the figure of speech, music and
learning.

Today she shows up at Vasant Panchami, when children dressed in yellow write their first letters, and in Bengal, where Saraswati Puja is as much a school festival as anything else. Books and instruments are laid out in her honour.