The Argument That Emptied the World

The argument started the way arguments between people who love each other often do. It sounded like philosophy.

Shiva was in one of his teaching moods.

The material world, he told Parvati, is ultimately maya. Illusion, laid over the only thing that is actually real - the formless, changeless spirit underneath it.

Food included.

He did not mean it at her. He meant it as doctrine, the sort of thing an ascetic god who spends long silences on a mountain says without expecting it to land anywhere personal.

It landed personally

Food is hers.

Nourishment, and the whole patient, unglamorous machinery of bodies staying alive long enough to go looking for anything at all - that is Parvati's domain.