To change the world

There’s a saying in Sanskrit: “Atithi Devo Bhava”. It means the Guest is God. In India, it’s not just a saying. It’s a way of life. A life principle etched into every Indian child’s upbringing.  A ritual came to life by offering the best food, the finest plates, the warmest smile, the strongest attention and the deepest care for someone who is visiting. Because to serve a guest is to honour the divine.

More than a year ago, I had the chance to visit the families of a close relative’s best friends in Australia. My first time meeting families outside my own culture. And the ‘divine’ in me? Ready to be honoured, naturally!. But the visits unfolded differently than I’d imagined. There were long silences, selective engagement, and the culinary twist of the divines ordering Uber Eats for themselves. In India, this would be seen as the utmost expression of insult toward a guest.

I was a little confused and may be a bit hungry as well. But mostly, intrigued.

With more than a year of reflection, I’ve come to understand that hospitality, like culture, wears many costumes. In some places, it’s ceremonial. In others, it’s casual. In some, it’s performance. In others, it’s simply a permission to be like family, which might mean helping yourself!

A couple of months ago, I visited the same family member again. When I arrived, she was in a work meeting. She buzzed me in, nodded a quick hello and returned to her task. Obviously, she was busy with her work. I sat in her living room, scrolling through my phone. Eventually got bored and fell asleep with my head resting on her dining table. She came over and woke me gently, “Go lie down on the bed, I have some homework to finish tonight”. I went to bed as she went back to her work.

Later, a guest - sorry, a divine arrived, one of the friend’s husband we visited, who had been staying with her for a week for work. He started talking about his day with full enthusiasm. And just like that, the air shifted, and my family member lit up. There was brightness in her presence and attention in her energy. They had a lengthy conversation filled with emotions, time and presence. Homework? Forgotten. Work? Paused. One of the happiest I’ve seen her. One of the loudest laughs I’ve heard from her (which woke me up, literally and metaphorically!). 

Later, I heard him share about his day with his wife over the phone. The energy dropped as the responses from the other side were short, less expressive and enthusiastic than my relative’s. In my ideal world, it should be the opposite way. When I listened to them from the other room, I felt a deep disappointment in my inability to build enthusiastic and dramatic conversations like that. I thought if I knew that, I’d have also gotten her attention, engagement and presence, just like her friend. 

But that quiet ache of exclusion and not belonging, and the contrast in responses to the same story from two different people, made me wonder: what does the principle of Atithi Devo Bhava actually mean? Had I misunderstood it all along?

While using all of my energy and attention to entertain my guests, to make them laugh and give them the best time ever, have I been inattentive to the needs and feelings of the closest ones in my own home, the ones whose lives are most deeply interconnected with mine? Just because I assumed they’d always be there, did I neglect them or treat them less and make them feel invisible in a place they should’ve felt safe, seen and free?

I realised it wasn’t only about that evening. Similar expressions of ignorance echoed through other parts of my life.

While doing my PhD, the whole mission was to find something new, publish results and prove that my work matters. I met brilliant people who have dedicated their whole lives to the pursuit of changing the world through their work. But, somewhere along this noble pursuit, we might begin to overlook the people whom we can make a real impact on. The ones whose hand we could hold, whose silences we could hear, whose joys we could deepen, whose sorrows we could lighten. Not tomorrow, not on the weekend, not a year from now. But now, in this very moment.

And when relationships break down, when families fall apart, when our kids turn to ChatGPT for help or when a loved one takes their own life, we say:

I didn’t know that they were going through that. 

They never said anything. They were so private.

Or we ask Where is this coming from?

Is that really true? Or did we throw away our power by ignoring the quiet invitations to notice, to care and to love? Because families and relationships rarely die from one big event. More often, they fade through hundreds of small moments of being unseen, unheard or misunderstood. It dies in the quiet accumulation of absences. The absence of effort, empathy and appreciation. The absence of our presence, as a mother, father, partner, husband, wife, son or daughter. And in the quiet distances we create when we trade presence for performance, the here and now for some imagined future, lasting happiness for short-term pleasures and the wisdom of our hearts for the constant noise in our heads.

And when we finally achieve things - degrees, promotions, titles, money and recognition, we wonder why they don’t seem to appreciate it. Why it wasn’t as fulfilling as we expected? So we set another goal, hoping the next achievement will finally bring that feeling we’ve been searching for. 

Perhaps this is the story of modern life. We aim so far that we forget to see what’s next to us. We wander far and wide in search of purpose and worth, only to miss the most meaningful things quietly waiting in front of us, every day. That in chasing the idea of an uncertain future, we miss the certainty of this moment. In running to prove our worth to the world, we neglect those who have already seen it. That in honouring the divine in others, we may miss the divine in those who sit quietly beside us every day.

The lesson I learned from fake sleeping that night is that Atithi Devo Bhava must begin from our own home. Not just with the guests who knock on our door, but with the people who keep it open for us, day after day. They are our sacred guests, and changing the world starts from there. That means each of us can change the world. Not by reaching far, but by reaching closer.

And it reminds me of the quote: “The people who need your love the most are often standing closest to you.”