Building Bridges, One Story at a Time

Some conversations teach us ideas.

Others teach us how understanding itself is built.

Through my conversations with my friend, mentor, and teacher, Yatin Samant, I have become deeply aware of how much culture lives inside stories. Stories, legends, and myths are not just carriers of wisdom - they are frameworks of meaning. They form a shared language that allows ideas to travel quickly, almost effortlessly, between people who grew up within the same cultural context.

But when that shared background is missing, something else happens.

Yatin often refers to stories that are well known in Indian culture. Sometimes it’s not even the explicit wisdom of the story that matters most, but the narrative itself, the analogy quietly embedded within it. For him, the story is a natural and immediate reference point. For me, it isn’t. Before we can explore the concept, he wants to illustrate, he usually needs to tell me the story first. That takes time and patience from both of us.

Yet in that very slowness, something meaningful unfolds. The story becomes a bridge - not only between two ideas, but between two cultural worlds.

In many of our conversations, Yatin also speaks about the three spiritual qualities, or gunas, described in Indian philosophy: Satvik, Rajasic, and Tamasic. These are not rigid categories, but tendencies present in all of us, shaping how we act, think, and perceive the world. Sattvik is associated with clarity, harmony, and selflessness. Rajasic (transactional state of mind) with action, ambition, and movement. Tamasic (reactional state of mind) with inertia, heaviness, or resistance to change. We all carry all three, but in different proportions, often shifting from moment to moment.

Recently, Yatin shared a story that brought all of this together for me. The story comes from later retellings of the Ramayana, the great Indian epic. As Rama’s army worked to build a bridge across the sea to Lanka, powerful warriors carried enormous stones and trees to form the causeway. Among them was a tiny squirrel. Wanting to help, but unable to lift heavy materials, the squirrel carried grains of sand and small pebbles, filling the gaps between the stones wherever it could. Some of the warriors laughed at the effort - it seemed insignificant compared to the grand task at hand. But Rama noticed. He recognized the sincerity and determination behind the squirrel’s actions and honoured its contribution. According to tradition, the markings on the squirrel’s back are said to be the gentle touch of Rama’s fingers - a reminder that no contribution is too small when it comes from devotion.

As I sat with this story, another question arose in me: was the squirrel acting from a Sattvik state of mind? Not driven by ambition, not seeking recognition, not comparing itself to others, but simply responding to the moment and contributing in the only way it could. No attachment to outcome - only intention.

Perhaps this is also what happens in conversations across cultures. When we don’t share the same stories, we must slow down, explain more, listen longer, and fill the gaps patiently, grain by grain.

This reflection led me back to something deeply personal: art.

I began to wonder whether a truly Sattvik state would even need art as a form. For me, art exists in the realm of human interaction and dialogue, in the space of learning not through the mind alone, but through all the senses. Art allows understanding to happen without the need to explain everything in words or to stay busy with concepts in an analytical sense.

Through art, certain ideas simply land.

They are understood as they are. And once understood in this way, they become easier to blend, combine, and connect with other concepts. It feels like a faster language - one that does not originate in the mind. The mind, in this process, is only a facilitator for this understanding to take place.

Perhaps art is like the squirrel’s sand - small, subtle, often underestimated, yet essential in filling the spaces that logic, language, and shared background cannot reach on their own. And maybe that is how real bridges are built -not only between lands, cultures, or philosophies, but between people. Slowly, patiently, with attention, sincerity, and the quiet determination to contribute what we can, from where we are.