I am into the third year of my confinement to my home. My coronary arteries have dealt with all possible interventions – a bypass surgery in 2004, rotablation and stenting in 2017 and after another angiogram a year later, I am on optimal medical management of stable angina. In between, the lockdown spell came and everyone was confined to home for a while. But then, although things turned normal, for me, staying at home is the new normal.

Lately, I began reading literature classics and took up Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), the ultimate novelist who could write 1000-pages of a story, captivating readers in his world and making them emotionally involved with his imaginary characters. I am an avid reader and must have read all good novels in the last 20 years or so but the expanse of the stories in Tolstoy’s big books offered me solace in times of my physical discomfort and mental uncertainty.

Earlier this year (2021), I read three of Tolstoy’s tomes – Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and Resurrection – in that order. All three are filmed and I could watch them later, on OTT. All the films are beautifully made and yet, the written novels stand out for their feel and the spell they cast upon the readers in the silence and privacy of their reading. No actors, no photography, no music, no sets, just the writer and the reader and what magic is created, what an experience!

Anna Karenina is a complex novel in eight parts. There are about a dozen major characters living in the Imperial Russian society of the 18^th century and the rural versus urban life is a constant theme where the personal dramas unfold. The heroine, Anna Karenina, is the mother of an eight-year-old boy and the wife of a senior government official. When she falls in love with a Calvary officer, this creates turmoil in her family and she ends up committing suicide by jumping in front of a moving train on a railway platform. Tolstoy takes no sides. There are no justifications and no judgements. The novel continues one full chapter after Anna Karenina is gone and it is only in the last scene that you realize that the Calvary officer was the lynchpin of the tragedy. 

War and Peace is even bigger than Anna Karenina. It weaves the stories of five Russian aristocratic families during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Russia, covering the period from 1805 to 1820. The novel begins in July 1805 describing a party hosted by a socialite in Saint Petersburg and ends with a precursor of the part of the Decembrist Uprising that would happen later in 1825, following the sudden death of Emperor Alexander I. Through the character of Prince Nikolai who is present throughout the novel, Tolstoy presents the spirit of the Russian nation, something no history book can ever capture or communicate. I wish that someone would write about the Indian freedom struggle with this honesty and without painting people as good and bad but as they had been living through their times. 

But the final jolt I received came from Resurrection, the last novel of Tolstoy published in 1899. It is a straightforward story of Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov, who wrongs a young girl out of momentary passion and goes away. Years later, the Prince finds her in the courtroom where he has been invited as a jury member and realizes that it was that one-night stand of his that has ruined the girl’s life and brought her to the punishment of a murder and he, the real culprit who spoiled her life is now an honorable jury. His awakening is described as the resurrection. Although he proposes to marry the lady now, she refuses, calling him a cheap man still out to justify his crime by becoming her savior. Honesty, I have not read anything that has such a powerful effect. I was dumbfounded by the way Tolstoy exposed human conscience – everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing oneself.

Tolstoy offered an unromantic view of religion and government as structures of controlling people. By the simple narrative in his novels, Tolstoy ridiculed the hollowness of religious rituals and showed governments as essentially violent forces controlling national resources for their own profits. He advocated a simplified economy, a lesser need for the exchange of goods, and as such, factories and cities, and showed cities as parasitic over villages, and politics as the engines of corruption.

But it is while examining human nature where Tolstoy turns peerless. Leo Tolstoy sensitively describes the feelings and emotions of the characters, making readers not only understand why they act as they do but also enabling them to identify with them and live their feelings in themselves and in others around them. Even the negative characters in Tolstoy’s novels have their own reasons for their acts. A die-hard humanist, Tolstoy had famously said, “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”

It hurts when every evening, the TV channels paint a picture of the world on fire. Like in some video game, leaders have been divided into heroes and villains depending upon who owns the channel. It is all propaganda with no attempt to report the facts; forget about analyzing them to arrive at the truth. And why blame TV, which is unabashedly a commercial platform, where are the writers? Where is a book on Afghanistan? How come the great integration of the NE people with mainstream India has not captured any author’s imagination? Why are we in denial of the aspirations of a capitalist India? Tolstoy was not only writing about his times, he was sharing with his readers the timeless truth about human nature, society and governments. 

For me, reading Resurrection has been transformative. I am weary of seeing people as kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. They keep changing from time to time and according to the people they are surrounded by. I can be kind and cruel, wise and stupid, energetic or apathetic depending upon whom I am dealing with, at which point of time and station in my life. So, never call anyone kind or wise, or wicked or stupid. Each one is all. Ravana had ten heads, which could be seen and counted. Modern man has morphing heads – they keep changing from frame to frame. 

Tolstoy writes so beautifully, “Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

I was initiated to the idea of “science with a human face” by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who in 1992 set up a program to develop Civilian Spinoffs of Defence Technology and make me its “lynchpin.” Working on this initiative, I came in contact with some truly outstanding scientists whose work had created tremendous impact on the lives of ordinary people. The indigenous coronary stent created under this program ushered a new era of biomedical industry in India. Later, when Dr Kalam became the president of India in 2002, he used me as his ambassador to connect interdisciplinary people for the common good.

I met the legendary Dr Verghese Kurien and he later hosted me at and invited me to his house for tea. Dr Kurien had been a mechanical engineer like me but strayed to Dairy technology, creating Amul in the process. When I asked him for a mantra, he plainly told me, “If you want to work for ordinary people, live with them, and live like them.” His words, “Extraordinary people are those ordinary people who do extra work,” have remained my guiding light. When in 2012, Dr Kurien was struggling for his life, people suggested that he be shifted from a hospital in Nadiad town for better treatment to Mumbai. However, he flatly refused saying that he would like to die where he had worked since 1949 rather than away in Mumbai. 

Dr William Dar was the Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in Hyderabad, when Dr APJ Abdul Kalam visited the international organization, which conducts agricultural research for rural development. Later, Dr Dar and I became friends. He facilitated my visit to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines. I wrote two books with him, an autobiographical “Feeding the Forgotten Poor” and the visionary, “Greening the Grey.” In 2014, Dr William Dar completed his record three terms at ICRISAT and left for his home country, the Philippines. He is currently the Secretary of Agriculture of the Philippines. 

I met at ICRISAT my seniors in GB Pant University, Dr SN Nigam and Dr KB Saxena. Both these scientists have given their lifetimes to improve their crops of interests – peanut and pigeon pea. Later, I met the rising star in plant genetics, Rajeev Varshney at ICRISAT, who has created reference genome sequence assemblies for 13 plant species. My other “comrades” are Vilas Tonapi, Director, Indian Institute of Millet Research; Dr Vinod Gaur, Chairman and Managing Director of National Seeds Corporation; and Dr Sanjay Kumar, Director, Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Goan Horticulturist Dr Sachin Tendulkar and Kenyan agronomist, Shem Odhiambo (in picture). Vinod and Sanjay were my juniors at GB Pant University. 

What exactly is meant by the human face of science? Dr Dar explained to me, that science that is aimed to better the living conditions of people, is what appealed to him. He also cautioned me that this science is not something separate from the mainstream science but is actually the real essence of it. All high-yield and disease-resistant varieties of seeds and plants, life-saving medicines, and livelihood-technologies are examples of the human face of science. It is an aspect that must be wilfully chosen and pursued by a scientist throughout his lifespan. There have been many chiefs of DRDO and other scientific organizations before and after Dr Kalam, but his passion for doing good for humanity stands out peerless.  

India has a great tradition of science and its unique system of Councils is most democratic, broad-based and participative. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) are like a tripod on which Indian science is placed. It does not matter what these organizations achieved and what they could not, but around them exists what makes India a modern nation in the world. But for this apparatus, there would be no Green Revolution then and no COVID-19 vaccine now. 

But the five billion poor people in the world are a grim reality. Why has science not responded to societal needs the way it could have? Why has it served more the rich and become the engine of their wealth? It is through owing science, that the world’s richest 1 per cent owns twice as much as the bottom 90 per cent. India’s richest 1 per cent of the population holds more than 40 per cent of the national wealth while the bottom 50 per cent, the majority of the population, owns a mere 3 per cent. So, where is the work of our scientific establishments going? Whose interests is it really serving? 

Public understanding and engagement with science is a hard task but it ought to be undertaken. It is a pity that Indian farmers are protesting against farm laws but not for high yield seeds. Currently, India produces about 110 million tonnes of rice a year from 44 million hectares of land at a rate of 2.4 tonnes per hectare. China grows 4.7 tonnes and Brazil, 3.6 tonnes per hectare. So, if yield is increased, land would be free to grow other crops that would bring more income and improve soil conditions.  

India needs an oilseed revolution. People have made enough money for a long time by importing cheap oils, mixing them and selling them as “branded oils,” with bogus claims about their nutritive value. India needs self-reliance in fertilizers. It is a shame that our fertilizer factory in Assam, where natural gas is available in plenty, is perennially down and urea is imported as if India is a technologically backward country incapable of running a urea production plant. India needs freedom from exports of essential medical consumables too. In the absence of this, our science remains selfish, captive of the enterprises, and used to generate profits rather than relieving the pain of the people. 

I am immensely enjoying watching the transformation of apple horticulture by tissue culture technology in India to the great economic benefit of the people of the northeast and we are now helping Rwanda to grow their own apples rather than importing them from South Africa. Kenya needs cashew farming on its seacoast to settle strife there and India can help in accomplishing this. And above all, the cattle-cloning technology mastered by National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, can solve livestock production constraints in Africa, especially goat production.

Who is stopping all this? The groups of vested interests that either own science or control scientists. And who gave them this right? The apathy of the ordinary people towards living a better life, and their surrender to bogus ideologies, scoundrel leaders and fraudulent businesspeople. The essence of science is – to keep trying even without being sure, having the willingness to surrender to ideas when the evidence is against them, and always keeping an open mind about the way beyond. It is up to us, humans, to give science its human face, and not the other way round. 

Terrorism is the scourge of the modern world. All scientific advancement and technological prowess get nullified by the terrorists – living in various safe havens – and striking civilization at their will. Is the era of progress, development, civility and openness over? Has the “Sine Wave” of history turned downward? First, the rampant coronavirus pandemic, and now, a Taliban government taking over Afghanistan do signal an ominous trend.

India’s vast resources are locked in safeguarding our borders, fighting terrorism and keeping its citizens safe. What nobody is saying but feeling with dread is, “What if India becomes the next target of these demonic forces?” We are indeed standing at the turning point of global politics. There are hardly any friends whom we can trust, and we are surrounded by big and small enemies; some that are apparently hostile and others, waiting for their moment to ditch and defy.

The modern era had begun with the colonization of Africa, Americas, Australia and Asia by the European nations The British, French, Germans, Dutch, Spaniards and the Portuguese sailed to wherever they could with their guns, plundered and pillaged, lording over the local people. The loot created their great cities and financed industrialization.

The First World War ended four Empires – the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Romanov. The Second World War brought down all European colonial empires and saw the simultaneous rise of two superpowers: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US). And now, China is emerging as the new boss of the world. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosted Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in July 2021 before the curtain was raised.

When were these forces born and how did they become so formidable? Can the Chinese takeover Afghanistan? Will the spread of instability from Afghanistan spill over into Pakistan, India and even China? What would stop the Uyghur fighters from becoming another Taliban? It is important to look at this phenomenon by removing all ideological glasses and calling things by their proper names.

Modern international terrorism was born on July 22, 1968, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an Israeli El Al flight traveling from Rome to Tel Aviv. Many more hijackings followed and it became a method to get Palestinian terrorists who were imprisoned in Israel released in exchange for the airline passengers. But why did this begin after 1968?

Since Israel was created after World War II on the territory of Palestine by the Winners of the War, Palestinians hoped the Arab nations to win them back their homeland but when in 1967, the mighty Egypt was defeated by Israel squarely and swiftly in just a week’s time, the Palestinians were the first to understand that the era of wars was indeed over and the culture of terrorism was born.

The next form of terrorism was demonstrated in 1972 when Palestine terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman at the Munich Olympics, capturing the attention of the world media that had gathered for the games.

On 23 June, Air India Flight 182 flying from Canada was blown up by a bomb killing 329 people by Khalistan terrorists. It set a pattern for future air terrorism plots. On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, from London to New York City was destroyed mid-flight by Libyan terrorists killing 270 people. On December 24, 1999, Indian Airlines Flight IC 814, was hijacked and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan culminating into the release of three dreaded terrorists, Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, in exchange of the lives of 176 passengers and 15 crew members. One passenger, 25-year-old Ripen Katyal, had already been killed by the terrorists.

And then on September11, 2001, in four coordinated terrorist attacks,the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, in the pinnacle of dread and devastation. America declared a war against terrorism. Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded. Libyan leader, Munnavar Gaddafi, was killed on the road; Osama bin-Laden was caught hiding in Pakistan and killed; the defeated Iraq President, Saddam Hussain, was tried and sentenced to death; and Iran’s general and commander of elite Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, was killed by a drone strike. And yet in the end, the US Army left, handing over Afghanistan to Taliban, as if nothing had ever happened!

Afghanistan is not some isolated part of the world. The cancer of terrorism has already spread all over the planet. The new aspiring world leaders, China and Russia, must know that if the genie of terrorism is not bottled up again, there will be consequences for their own people and interests. After Taliban has been gifted an entire nation, the other three no lesser forces of ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda would not sit idle and would seek their “pound of flesh” in controlling territories they consider themselves legally entitled to, in a ruthless and inhuman way.

Whosoever brought the Genie out of the bottle cannot run away and preach the world about pacifism. The Chinese are surely determined to rule over the world and it is important that they remember what happened to the British, Russians and Americans who had been there earlier. Even modest expectations in Afghanistan can be audacious.

English novelist, Eric Arthur Blair, who wrote as “George Orwell,” in his book, “1984,” famously wrote, “The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” Let us not sugar-coat, or put our heads in the sand.

A snake can never be a pet and poison cannot become nutrition. Above all, there is a lesson to be learnt by aspiring superpowers that no leader or nation in the world can now be an object of worship. No country must intervene in another country’s problems, spill blood, and leave mess behind. Let each nation carry its own cross and no one can become the Saviour and the stopper of the buck.

It is also time for India to wake up to the reality that no one in the modern world is any one’s friend. It is a zero-sum world where every act is a transaction. History will never forgive our leaders of today if they remain blind to the writing on the wall and keep themselves busy in the electoral politics of winning elections and enjoying the power that they bring. Let us call things by their proper names and wake up to the grim reality as one united, determined, and formidable nation of 1.4 billion people.

In 1965, there was a war with Pakistan. In January 1966, Russia presided over a compromise in Tashkent, now the capital of Uzbekistan. On the night of signing the agreement, Indian Prime Minster Lal Bahadur Shastri died. Russian Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin escorted his body to India. That is how as a child I got introduced to Russia.  

I watched my first English film in 1968 in my hometown, Meerut. It was a James Bond movie called ‘From Russia with Love.’ I walked about five kilometres with a few of my friends, all senior to me, to the Palace Cinema in Cantonment where English films were shown. I could not understand much of what was being shown, but I liked the beautiful locations of Istanbul in Turkey. The hero was like a god and even the villain was sophisticated and well-mannered. For many years, I used to identify actor Sean Connery only as James Bond. 

Then came Raj Kapoor’s film, ‘Mera Naam Joker’ in 1970. It was more than four hours-long and had two intervals. There was a Russian circus artist, Marina, in the film, played by actress Kseniya Ryabinkina, whom the hero loved, but she had to return to Russia. I saw it in Nishat Cinema with my father, who was a big fan of Raj Kapoor’s. He did not like the film and I too was confused. Without any fight or a villain, the hero failed in his love three times! 

In 1971, India got involved in the liberation movement in East Pakistan and Russia stonewalled the American Seventh Fleet that was expected to intervene in support of Pakistan. Thus, the nation of Bangladesh was created. India signed a 20-year treaty with Russia, and we all saw Russians as our big friends. Nothing of this sort was ever done before or after this in the history of India. 

I joined the GB Pant University for my engineering studies and there, a big book exhibition arrived, selling Russian books translated into English and Hindi. Not only were the books attractive in look and feel, but they were also attractively priced. For twenty rupees that I had to spare, I could buy two books — the Hindi translation of Maxim Gorky’s novel, ‘Mother’ and S. Venetsky’s ‘Tales About Metals,’ where I first read about Titanium, a great metal given the exalted name — ‘Son of the Earth.’

When I joined DRDO in 1982 and was posted at DRDL, Hyderabad, to work as a Missile scientist, there was Russia all around. My boss, Colonel VJ Sundaram, tasked me to prepare a bill of material of the airframe of the Kavadrat surface-to-air missile that later became ‘TRISHUL’ after redesign. I struggled with Russian drawings, excellently made, and slowly picked up how to read the nomenclature of the components. When I later developed India’s first titanium air bottle, the ‘Tales About Metals’ was still with me. 

In Hyderabad, there was a regular bookshop called ‘Vishal Andhra’, selling Russian books and whenever I used to visit the Koti area, I would go there to spend time and buy a book. ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy, ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky and ‘Undertaker’ by Alexander Pushkin were a few of the precious literary gems that I acquired. Later, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, a great Russian enthusiast himself, gave me ‘Dreams of Earth and Sky’ by Konstanti Tsiolkovsky, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics and a great writer, from his personal collection. I read all these books and they become the foundation on which I developed my writing career.

In 1999, I visited Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan that became independent after the dissolution of Soviet Russia in 1991. Russia language was everywhere including on the Moscow TV channel, as the sole connection with the outside world. I went there thrice and visited Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan from there. I wanted to go to Tashkent too, but the bilateral relations between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were estranged. When the President of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, came to India in 2003, President Kalam ensured my presence in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. 

In December 2004, when President Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi, President Kalam invited me to the State Banquet that he had hosted in his honor. All the eighty members of President Putin’s entourage, including some 20 ladies, were all dressed in black. Dr Kalam introduced me to President Putin as a devotee of Russian literature. President Putin did not say a word to anyone but spoke from his eyes and I will never forget the pure love and kindness his expression conveyed. Later, when I met the President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, in April 2005, I was astonished to see the well-built Uzbeks. President Karimov handled Islamic terrorism in his country with an iron hand and kept his country safe and progressing. 

It is obvious that Russia has taken a different posture in the new Asian realities and that the historical Indo-Russian bonhomie has cooled off if it is not over. A perception was created by Russia that Western powers have adopted an aggressive and devious policy to engage India in anti-China games even while they are ignoring the aggression by China against India. Relations between Moscow and Beijing are at their best-ever level today, even better than they were in the 1950s when newly independent China made Russia its ideological soulmate, and Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong signed a formal treaty of alliance in 1950.

The way the United States has left Afghanistan and the regime has changed overnight; Russia-China appears to be the new superpower of the world. For sure, Russia and China have teamed up for a robotic mission to an asteroid in 2024. They are coordinating a series of lunar missions intended to build a permanent research base on the south pole of the moon by 2030. The powerful tenures of Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Putin are looking as if they will extend much deeper into the 21st century.

India must recalibrate its position and this is not an easy task. Two roads diverge. In the coming few months, the great hope of India joining the expanded G-7 grouping would be validated by how the West decides to take the new regime in Afghanistan. Is it time to restore our alliance with Russia? Is this possible? 

Tolstoy writes in ‘Anna Karenina’, “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” It is time to find love and not be drowned in the deluge of hate. Love is a package deal. You can’t pick and choose and expect people to be as you’d like them to be. So, take a pause, and do that which is the best interests of our nation. Let leaders from all political parties sit together and decide where they want to see India in 2050. 

It so happens that my nephew (brother’s son) married a Russian girl studying in the United States, and they have recently been blessed with twin daughters. Yesterday, when I was interacting with the family online, I realized that my buying Gorky’s book, ‘Mother’ in the mid-1970s was not some random event but an omen announcing the very distant future that has finally arrived now! 

No moment ever returns in life. Time flies like an arrow, forever forward. “Impermanence is the hallmark of existence,” said Buddha. And as goes one saying, “You can’t take bath in the same river again,” as the water you have bathed with has gone away downstream and you are bathing the second time in the water that has freshly arrived. But there are certain moments that you can’t even recreate. I am sharing one such moment in my life that I can only relive in my memory.

It was on March 15, 2007. President APJ Abdul Kalam took me with him to Arunanchal Pradesh. We landed at Guwahati Airport and then boarded helicopters to visit Kibithu, the last post in the eastern centre of the Indo-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. Chief of Indian Army General Joginder Jaswant (JJ) Singh was escorting Dr. Kalam. Five helicopters in a formation flew through the Lohit Valley, a few hundred meters above the river, with tall mountains on both sides. It was a breath-taking view that one sees only in films, or in one’s dreams.

Kibithu is one of the easternmost permanently populated towns of India, located on the LAC (Line of Actual Control) west of Diphu Pass near India-China-Myanmar tri-junction. The Lohit River enters India north of Kibithu and merges with the Brahmaputra after reaching the plains in Assam. There was a telescope installed there and I was watching the Chinese flags on the other side, while President Kalam interacted with our soldiers, when three Army officers of Major rank, among them was a lady, approached me and asked if I was the co-author of ‘Wings of Fire.’ I blushed.   

One officer took control of the telescope and guided it to show me a water body below called Parshurama Kund. I was told that when Lord Parshurama, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, on the orders of his father, Rishi Jamadagni, beheaded his mother Renuka, his axe got stuck to his hand. His father, pleased with his obedience, decided to give Parshurama a boon, to which he asked for his mother to be restored to life. But the axe would still not leave his hand. Finally, Parshurama arrived at the banks of the Lohit River and got cleansed of his sin.

Now, comes the interesting part of the story. The two gentlemen Army officers were from Kerala and Punjab, and the lady was from Uttaranchal. Each of them claimed the ancestry of Parshurama. I found in these three officers and their claim on Parshurama the irrefutable testimony of Indian civilization and the charade of the Aryan-Dravidian rift and the discovery of India through European eyes collapsed in that one moment. Another realization I had was that India is surrounded by enemies and people enjoying their lives in the comforts and pleasures of cities must know that there are vigilant soldiers living in the most hostile conditions, taking care of their secured world.

I later had a brief chat with General JJ Singh. A true persona of a warrior, he remembered his father, Lieutenant Colonel Jaswant Singh Marwah, who was posted in the princely state of Bahawalpur, under British India, when he was born. After the partition, he came to India with him as a two-year-old child. His grandfather, Atma Singh Marwah, fought in the Mesopotamian Campaign during the First World War. General Singh said that he was a cadet at the National Defence Academy when China attacked India in 1962. The deputy commandant of the NDA at the time, Brigadier Hoshiar Singh, was given command of a brigade under the 4th Infantry Division and was killed in action.

We returned to Delhi in the evening, and I had a late-night walk in the Mughal Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhawan with President Kalam. It was Ekadashi (the 11^th day of the Lunar calendar) and the bright moonlight created a surreal atmosphere. I narrated Parshurama’s story to Dr Kalam and he surprised me by saying that he knew it all. Then he added that during the twenty years he had spent in Thiruvananthapuram, while working for Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), he had learnt about Parshurama, who indeed is considered the “Father of Kerala.” When Parshurama threw his battle axe into the sea, the land of Kerala was reclaimed from the waters.

Later in 2011, I stayed at the Leela Kovalam Beach Hotel. There was a big painting of a majestic king in the lobby. When I inquired who he was, the receptionist told me with a “who-else-could-it-be” look that it was that of Parshurama. While returning, I made it a point to visit the ancient Parashurama temple about six kilometres from the hotel. It is famous for Balitharpanam, where one can pay tribute to one’s ancestors, I was told.

The legend of Parshurama may be all imagination, but it withstood time – thousands of years! That a water body in remote Arunanchal Pradesh bears his name, three officers from the Indian Army claim him, and that he is considered the “Father of Kerala” cannot be brushed aside. Myths carry their own power as they do not happen all at once. They form slowly, and are told and heard by successive generations, grounded in the mill of time until they turn into very fine powder that is everywhere and cannot really be dusted off.

When we look at our own life and times, how do we know what is real and what is imaginary and yet believed to be real? Right in front of my eyes, I saw nine big tech companies, six American and three Chinese, taking the control of the world. We are sucked into global supply chains by online retail and door delivery systems. Our food, or grocery, a plumber, and even a driver for an hour is available by touching the screens of our smartphones a few times. There is a menu for everything, even our emotions. I wonder for how long we would be able to feel our emotion correctly after conveying it through an emoji on the screen day in and day out!

Who imagined this life where a few powerful corporations, say one lakh people, or a million people put together, construct underlying structures and digital machinery that decides, sorts, and controls eight billion people? When I speak to Alexa and my TV shows me what I want, it is a myth coming true for my mother but fun and a given reality for my grandson. But what about a poor, hungry person, or a sick patient without the means for medical care- whom do they call, and would anyone ever respond? Can we escape a future where big nine, ten, or hundred companies have taken over the control of our planet and made a myth out of our own very life!