Today I attended my mentor Arun Kumar’s PHD viva voce the final academic defense before he stepped into the title of Doctor. Watching someone articulate years of research with clarity and conviction is powerful. It is not just an examination; it is a culmination.
During his defense, he said something that stayed with me:
“One age must collapse in order to begin a new age.”
He meant it in an intellectual sense the closing of one phase of inquiry so another can begin. But the moment I heard it, my mind travelled somewhere older. Somewhere mythic.
It sounded like Yuga.
In the concept of Yuga, time is cyclical. Ages do not simply progress; they unfold, decay, and renew. Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga are not just historical phases they are philosophical statements about rhythm.
Every Yuga contains within it the seed of its own ending.
That is what struck me. Collapse is not an interruption of time; it is part of its design.
We often treat collapse as catastrophe. But in Hindu cosmology, dissolution is sacred. When Dvapara Yuga concludes, even Krishna departs, marking the transition into Kali Yuga. It is not dramatic spectacle it is inevitability. An age completes itself and withdraws.
And this is where the connection deepens.
In academic life, too, phases must end. A student phase collapses for a scholar phase to rise. A research question dissolves so a sharper one can emerge. Old frameworks are dismantled to build stronger arguments. Intellectual growth itself demands structured collapse.
It made me realize something about life beyond academia.
Maybe our identities function like Yugas.
Maybe our comfort zones are Satya Yugas we cling to.
Maybe our confusions are Kali Yugas preparing us for renewal.
We resist endings because they feel like loss. But what if endings are completion? What if collapse is evidence that something has fully lived out its purpose?
Even Shiva, often misunderstood as the destroyer, represents necessary dissolution. Without destruction, there is stagnation. Without night, dawn has no meaning.
Sitting in that viva room today, I realized that the sentence I heard was not just academic commentary. It was philosophical truth.
An age must collapse.
Not because it failed.
But because it finished.
And that thought stayed with me long after the defense ended.
Somewhere within each of us, an old age is waiting to fold into itself so something braver, wiser, and more refined can begin.
The wheel turns.
Whether we resist it or not.
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