The British comic Eddie Izzard expressed it best: “Shiva was the God of Creation and Destruction. Which is a good god to be. Whoom [creates thing]. What do you think? Do you like that? You don’t like that? Whoom [destroys thing]. If you’re just the God of Creation, you’re going Whoom [creates thing]. What do you think? Do you like that? You don’t? All right, I’ll put it in the garage.”

Traditional iconography presents Shiva the Destroyer as a close cousin of Agni, the god of fire, “with a tawny beard, sharp jaws and burning teeth”; he feeds on wood, and smoke is his flag. His creative aspect was expressed in turn in dance. Therefore, the most complete image of creation and destruction in the Hindu world is that of Shiva dancing in flames. The fire that creates.

Each cell of our body is indeed a kind of micro-Shiva.

After all, metabolism is nothing more than a continuous cycle of destruction and creation. The human body, as well as any heterotrophic bacteria that you can grow on a sweetened Petri dish, bases its functioning on one fundamental equation. One molecule of glucose and six molecules of O2 give six molecules of CO2, six molecules of H2O and energy. Although the actual chemical reactions that are executed in the process can be extremely complex, the basic logic is expressed in that simplified equation. And do you know what this process is called? Combustion.

To a chemist, the concept of ‘combustion’ means any process involving the release of energy, especially if this is accompanied