Mayank Chhaya Daily

#Perestroika, #Glasnost, #MikhailGorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev (Photo courtesy: The Gorbachev Foundation, https://www.gorby.ru/en/)

I have been reflecting on the passing of Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday at age 91. Strangely, the first thought that came to my mind was about how differently Gorbachev, had he risen in the age of social media, would have impacted history.

Of course, his impact on world history cannot be overstated even some three decades before the advent of social media. What came to my mind was hash-tagging of Gorbachev’s two extraordinary legacies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). The world would have hash-tagged the heck out of these two Russian words in the current era. Gen Z has next to no awareness of Gorbachev, let alone the concepts of what perestroika and glasnost within a deeply entrenched Soviet society.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who is often seen as an anti-thesis of Gorbachev and also as someone who did never warm up to his worldview, expressed “deep condolences”, saying he would send a telegram to Gorbachev’s family and friends. At a time when Moscow is so mired the bloody invasion of Ukraine of Putin’s choosing, the reminder of Gorbachev’s life and work would remain controversial. As someone instrumental in ending the Cold War, which led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union on December 31, 1991, Gorbachev has often been viewed in Russia as a leader who destroyed the Soviet Union as a superpower long rivaling the United States.

I remember that sometime in August of that year Gorbachev and his wife Raisa were placed under house arrest as the frenzy of the Soviet collapse was at its peak. The exact date was August 18, 1991, when General Igor Maltsev, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Air Defense Troops, put the Gorbachevs under house arrest.  He later recalled that he feared they would be killed. Had that happened he would have died at 60 and not slid into a hazy oblivion at 91.

I would not like to go into all the complex history of the Soviet disintegration here and the eventual abortive coup by Gennady Yanayev, who was Gorbachev’s vice president. He died in 2010 as an obscure Communist Party functionary.

I was posted in Delhi from Bombay in 1989 when Gorbachev was very much a global superstar generously helped by the U.S. mainstream media which is always in search for celebrity. By that time the somewhat Hollywoodized action of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a B-list actor once, grandiloquently asking Gorbachev on June 12, 1987, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” had already become part of the Cold War folklore. If you were in the U.S. then, you would probably think that Reagan asked Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall and a couple of minutes later the Soviet leader yielded to a combination of the U.S. leader’s folksy charm and aggressive charisma by tearing down the wall. In reality, it was only two years later, on November 9, 1989, that the Berlin Wall was dismantled.

Soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, I was involved in ghost-writing a book that took off on the historic disintegration. In that I had written about how despite pretensions to the contrary no one really saw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union in the dramatic manner it did.

Gorbachev will remain a controversial figure in Russia’s history even though he would also be seen as a great statesman. Unlike Putin, Gorbachev had a natural charisma, somewhat accentuated by his large, red birth mark on his balding head, that the West latched on much to the chagrin of still the deeply entrenched Soviet society.

As an aside, Gorbachev seemed to have a soft corner for India generally and its then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi particularly. By some coincidence, the two leaders rose to their top national roles respectively not too far apart from each other; Gandhi in 1984 and Gorbachev in 1985. About a year or so later, Gorbachev was in New Delhi making his first Asian visit anywhere. The two created what came to be known as the Delhi Declaration aimed at complete nuclear disarmament by turn of the 20^th century.

In a span of about six years between 1985 and 1991 Gorbachev transformed not just the Soviet Union as its last president—read broke down in a sense—but also changed geopolitics. It is customary to claim here in America that Reagan ended the Cold War when the reality is far more complex. Gorbachev probably played a much greater role in it considering that he was up against such a rigid, militarized and secretive society. It is no wonder that he sincerely thought that that August, 1991 that he and his family would be killed in the runup to the abortive coup by his Vice President Yanayev.

A Tangential Life

This is not going to be the cover of my memoir. It is just a space-holder.

I have been sporadically writing my memoir titled ‘A Tangential Life’ for a while now. So far, I have written 45,000 words with the aim of wrapping it up at 100,000. As of now the plan is to release it sometime towards the end of 2023 when I complete a quarter century in America. Neither 100,000 words nor 25 years have any symbolic significance. It might as well be 107,453 words and released in the 26^th year of my life in the United States. The point is there is none to it.

The title of the memoir has to do with the fact that I have indeed led a tangential life, skimming many other consequential lives without contributing anything of consequence myself. I bring nothing of value to the human discourse. I have generally held a very low opinion about existence from early teens, frequently using the word ‘Vyarth’, which means pointless or futile or useless or worthless in Gujarati and many other Indian languages. ‘Vyarth’ has always been my vantage point on existence. With that as the backdrop I would like to tease you with a short passage from the first chapter of my memoir.

Chapter 1

Childhood: Vimlaben, georgette, “ambodo” and midriff

I do not know anyone who has embryonic or womb memory. For instance, I do not remember coming out of my mother. Such things are taken on faith. We are all told that we are born of a certain person; in my case Snehlata, my mother. I take that to be the truth. There is no point challenging a claim like that because the claimant has nothing to gain by that.

My earliest childhood memory begins around age four when I was already in school. My first school’s name was Anand Bal Mandir, which I can literally translate as Joyous Children’s Temple. I skipped a grade, meaning the kindergarten, and was directly enrolled in the first grade. I was told my comprehension at age 4/5 was of that level. I suppose it is a good thing.

I do not remember much about Anand Bal Mandir but have vivid visual memory of the woman who chaperoned some of us kids to the school. He name was Vimlaben. Actually, her name was Vimla and ben was added as a Gujarati term for respect.

From my average height as a four-year-old, looking Vimlaben appeared inordinately large. She was, from what I recall, a portly woman who wore a big “ambodo”, Gujarati for a bun. Her hair was generously oiled and tightly combed and tied. There was not a loose strand of hair. Sometimes that gave her a look of unnecessary severity and sternness. It made her look like she was always on the verge of scolding one of us. In reality, she was a very kind woman.

I remember one particular sari that she wore. I later found out that it was georgette with a pattern of light green colored leaves and flowers.

I also remember her midriff spilling out, giving her a matronly/motherly feel. For a four-year-old, who was the fourth child of Snehlata, a woman walking him to and from school everyday was a good stand-in for mother.

That’s about the extent of what I recall of the earliest part of my childhood—Vimlaben, georgette, “ambodo” and midriff.

A couple of observations about Amazon Prime's 'Guilty Minds'

I stopped reviewing books, movies, plays, art etc. almost 40 years ago. I find it futile and somewhat presumptuous. A creator has created something and that’s that has been my view of anything creative. So, what I am about to write is not a review by a long shot but perhaps an observation or two.

I began watching 'Guilty Minds', an Indian legal drama, on Amazon Prime yesterday. It is only fair that I say a word or three about the series. It is excellent, credible and appropriately hip. Directed by Shefali Bhushan and Jayant Digambar Somalkar, ‘Guilty Minds’ at its core is an austere legal drama series of the kind not seen before in India. And that’s all I am going to say by way of a review. 

What has stayed with me from the series, however,  and I am sure it is an unusual thing to say, is how credible the courtrooms look in the show. What is even more remarkable is that the quality of décor, furniture and overall ambience change hierarchically. Let me explain. A Sessions Court, for instance, which is a lower court in India trying criminal cases, is made to look visually downbeat compared to a High Court, which, while well-appointed, is less grand in its trimmings and appurtenances than the Supreme Court, the country’s highest.

Oftentimes, the bearings of the judges of these courts also change in terms of their body language, according to their place in the pecking order. There are, of course, exceptions among lower court judges in real life who are as well turned out and self-assured as a Supreme Court justice.

I find it interesting that ‘Guilty Minds’ has paid attention to these details. Even judges look credible unlike those in the traditional Hindi films who are caricatures of caricatures. Courtroom arguments are shorn of bombast that attends courtroom dramas in the movies. In a sense, the look and feel of lower courts in the web series reminded me of what one saw in Chaitanya Tamhane’s superbly executed 2014 film ‘Court’. That was perhaps for the first time that a courtroom in the movies looked like a real courtroom.

The fact that the makers of ‘Guilty Minds’ have paid attention to such details emblematizes the series' overall credibility as a legal drama. The themes under litigation throughout the series also have the same level of credibility and contemporariness.

Of dreams and multiverse

Lately, I dream a lot and in a way that dreams spill into my waking hours. More often than not my dreams have produced poetry and also some paintings. Early this morning though it triggered a theory about dreaming and multiverse. The irony of a dream resulting in a theory about dreaming was not lost on me.

Some of you who occasionally read my blog would have noticed I have long indulged in theorizing that border on the fictional; science-fictional, if I may. Today’s very short post is in that realm. Multiverse or a set of parallel universes has been speculated about serious physicists for a while but so far there is nothing approaching a serious theory about it.

I had written a post sometime ago about how I suspect our dreams are leaks from the nearest parallel universe. That might explain the often-sheer absurdity of their situation. It is beyond me how and why our mind would conjure up in sleep visuals, situations and ideas which we have not even remotely encountered or thought of in waking life. One of the most prominent explanations for dreaming is that it results from random electrical brain impulses being synthesized. As theories go this one is pretty good but somehow it does not convince me. Hence, I have created a theory of dreaming mainly for my own edification. If dreams are absurd, why can't a theory about it be absurd too? This is where the idea of multiverse comes in.

The Hindu concept that our soul never dies but merely transmigrates to a new life or, in the case of the exalted, attains moksha is a fascinating one. What if this transmigration is across multiple universes? What if we are caught in a perpetual cycle of birth and death but each occurring in a separate universe? If my current life in this current universe is merely a part of a birth-death cycle unfolding along a multiverse, then it is conceivable that I carry memories of most immediate past life into my current life. And those memories, which seem utterly absurd in our dreams, may indeed have some basis in reality and genuine context in a parallel universe that I transmigrated from.

Like I said, I am choosing to go along this theory of dreaming for now for my own entertainment. I have not yet resolved whether dreams in my current life are carryover memories only from the last universe or an accumulation of the many that I ought to have been born and died in. By this point, if you think that I am losing my mind, I think that would be a fair response. However, to and in my mind I am as sane as one gets.

Rocks shaped by water on Mars found

Martian rocks shaped by water (Photo: NASA)

In the breathtaking glamor and celebrity of the images being regularly produced by the James Webb Space Telescope, it is easy to forget the grunt work phase of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars going on right now. But it is my job to keep track of such work, or at any rate, I have made it my job to do so.

Reading a paper in the journal Science Advances this morning one is excited that the rover is producing some remarkable results. It has collected Martian rocks in the Jezero crater floor, shaped by water that could possibly contain biosignatures or signs of life. What is even more exciting is that these rock samples will be brought back to Earth by the 2030s.

The paper’s abstract, a bit too science-y for the lay readership, says, “The potential for secondary aqueous phases to preserve evidence of life depends on how they formed. On Earth, studies of evaporitic and desert environments demonstrate the presence and preservation of microbial life in association with salts. Carbonate veins on Earth, produced through serpentinization and carbonation, can preserve biomarkers such as lipids and/or organic structures interpreted as fossilized microbial communities. By analogy, we propose that the secondary phases in the altered igneous rocks of the Jezero crater floor might have the potential to record biosignatures, if ancient habitable environments existed.”

This is a big deal in our quest to look for life other than on Earth and perhaps by far the most promising find.

The paper says, “Laboratories on Earth have measurement capabilities superior to instruments which can be mounted on a Mars rover. An objective of the Mars 2020 mission is therefore to collect samples, in the form of drilled rock cores, for potential transport to Earth by another spacecraft in the 2030s. We attempted core acquisition on three different rock targets: two in the Máaz formation and one in the Séítah formation. The first coring attempt occurred near Guillaumes, in the low-lying, polygonal pavement of the Roubion member of the Máaz formation. Although the sample collection process appeared to execute as expected, the sample tube was subsequently found to contain no rock or rock fragments. A likely explanation is that this rock disintegrated during drilling, likely due to the rock’s aqueous alteration (Fig. 3A). The sample tube was sealed and instead provides a sample of ambient Martian atmosphere. A second sample acquisition attempt was performed on the Rochette member on the crest of Artuby ridge near Bellegarde, and a third on the Séítah formation Bastide member near Dourbes; these were both successful.”

Reading this extensive paper, something I have always enjoyed, one is once again struck by how life, therefore the universe is all chemistry governed by the laws of physics. Speaking of the laws of physics, the paper mentions the use of Raman spectroscopy 12 times; Raman being named after the Nobel Prize winning Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman whose pioneering work in studying the scattering of light using a spectrograph that he developed. “Raman spectroscopy indicates that the bright white void-filling material in the Máaz formation abrasion patches is at least partially composed of hydrous Ca-sulfate and Na-perchlorate, sometimes co-located with each other," it says.

How amazing it is that in science, discoveries come in handy decades, sometimes centuries, after they were made and irrespective of who made them. At its purest, science makes no distinction among people and countries.

The aqueous alterations in the Martian rocks that the paper talks about means changes and modification in rock shapes made by their interaction with flowing water.

While the paper may not interest a lot of people, apart from its pure science what draws me to it are occasional interesting turns of phrase such as “Carbonate veins on Earth, produced through serpentinization.”

Squeezing every last drop of paint out of chronic impecuniosity

As an aspiring painter, I have discovered to my delight that paint lasts much, much longer than what the size of a bottle or a tube might make you feel.

I have recently painted at least 35 pieces, if not more, by squeezing every last drop of paint. You would be astonished how much remains after you think you have exhausted paint. In that, paint bottles and tubes are not that different from toothpastes. There is always more until there isn’t.

In my case, scraping the absolute bottom of paint bottles and tubes is necessitated by my chronic impecuniosity. The last routine I do is add a bit of water in every bottle, shake it up to create what is a remarkably effective priming wash. I have been occasionally asked how I achieve certain glow underneath a painting. The answer is this priming wash. It is not a technique but mainly an assault on a canvas or a sketchpad.

I want to cite here the last six paintings that I have done under my ongoing series Forest. Each has been done well past the point where all my paint seemed over. There is no trick to it other than inducing rage from the most penurious corners of your existence.

For me painting is a seemingly dichotomous mix of raging passion and pure indifference.

By Jove, Jupiter is a stunner!

Webb NIRCam composite image from two filters – F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan) – of Jupiter system, Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.

By Jove, Jupiter is a stunner! Even from some 615 million kilometers as captured by the astonishing James Webb Space Telescope.

Up close, it is the monster of our solar system which is so big that the rest of the planets could fit into it.

Jupiter is a wannabe star. Had it grown bigger it may have ignited enough and then who knows? It is said that if there were 1000 Jupiters fused together there could have been a rival star to the sun in our solar system. For now though, we have to be content with one monstrous gas giant among us.

Purely as a comparison Jupiter is massive enough to envelop 1000 Earths or eleven Earths could fit across Jupiter’s equator. Its core, if it has any, would be the size of Earth. It is more massive than the rest of the planets in our solar system combined and then some more.

The scientific community is convinced that had it not been for Jupiter, there would not have been us with all our ridiculous certitudes and stupid little squabbles. Jupiter has been described as a preserver and nurturer because of where it is in our solar system and the way it so magnificently acts as Earth’s protector.

Its average distance from Earth is 715 million km / 444 million miles. When we are at our closest we are  588 million km / 365 million miles apart. When we are our farthest apart, Jupiter and Earth are 968 million km / 601 million miles from each other. Currently, Jupiter is about 617 million kilometers from us.

With its 67 moons Jupiter takes 12 earth years to complete one orbit around the sun. It takes about ten hours to rotate around its axis making the Jovian day that long. So, if you are that pretentious type who complain that you wish there were more than 24 hours in a day to accomplish some fantastic things in your life, try moving to Jupiter.

With no known surface, the gas giant’s clouds are an eternally swirling toxic mix of ammonia and other unknown chemicals. Storms just rage on with no landfall to make. Despite its monstrous size it rotates very fast— spinning once every ten hours. That fast spin churns up the toxic brew in its atmosphere to create what is easily the most strikingly beautiful mélange of shapes and colors in our solar system. It is paradoxical that the more toxic something is, the more bewitchingly beautiful it is.

It is said that once our sun has become a white dwarf some five billion years from now, Jupiter will still go on because of its internal furnace. It is just as well because Jupiter grabbed most of the material left over by the sun after its formation.

So please pay respect, people, and say By Jove. If you must thank something today, start with Jupiter.

Speaking of Jupiter’s bewitching beauty, the images produced by Webb are so spectacular you might think it was showing off just for the camera. Incidentally, Webb does not photograph the way we understand it here on Earth.

Here is what NASA says about the breathtaking images shown here.

“Data from telescopes like Webb doesn’t arrive on Earth neatly packaged. Instead, it contains information about the brightness of the light on Webb’s detectors. This information arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Webb’s mission and science operations center, as raw data. STScI processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and delivers it to the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes for dissemination. Scientists then translate that information into images like these during the course of their research (here’s a podcast about that). While a team at STScI formally processes Webb images for official release, non-professional astronomers known as citizen scientists often dive into the public data archive to retrieve and process images, too.

Judy Schmidt of Modesto California, a longtime image processor in the citizen science community, processed these new views of Jupiter. For the image that includes the tiny satellites, she collaborated with Ricardo Hueso, a co-investigator on these observations, who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.”

Every time I write about Jupiter—and I have written quite a bit—I have to remind myself to get on with my long-proposed book “What does Jupiter really do?” It is really not so much about Jupiter as it is about the absurd scale of objects in the universe and whether they make any sense as to what they do. It is a book about my lifelong preoccupation with the universe.

Terrorism charges against Imran Khan push Pakistan to the edge

I wrote the following for Indica News: 

By Mayank Chhaya

Barely eight days after Pakistan celebrated its 75^th independence day, the country is caught in a sordid if familiar powerplay.

Pakistani police have filed terrorism charges against former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted in April after a no-confidence vote. The charges stem from Khan declaring at a public rally his intention to sue police officers and a female judge. Khan has also alleged that a close aide of his had been tortured after his arrest.

The police have filed what is known as a first information report (FIR), a legal practice prevalent in South Asia, including India, which generally leads to an arrest after an accused is presented before a magistrate. However, Khan’s lawyers have managed to secure a protective bail, also known anticipatory bail, in order to preempt an immediate arrest. The high court in Islamabad which gave him time until Thursday.

At a rally in Islamabad on Saturday, Khan was reported as saying, "Listen Director Inspector General (of police), we're not going to let you go, we're going to file a case against you. And madam magistrate you should also get ready, we will take action against you." The rally was to show solidarity Khan’s former chief of staff Shahbaz Gill, who was arrested earlier this month on sedition charges. The sedition charges were provoked by Gill urging soldiers to disobey orders from the military commanders.

While the Pakistani authorities investigate whether Khan violated anti-terror laws, he has been banned from holding public rallies as well live television appearance. After his ouster in April, he has stepped up his public engagement and appears to have become politically stronger and more popular. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party has said the investigation is on "frivolous allegations with no legal grounds."

Irrespective of whether the charges lead to arrest or eventually even conviction and prison time, the fact that they have been made at all is a clear indication of a serious escalation in political tensions by the government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. As an indication of the rising tensions, Pakistan's Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has described Khan’s comments as “hate speech” and instructed television channels not to carry any more speeches by him.

One particular source of worry for the Sharif government is Khan’s repeated assertions that he was dislodged from power as a result of collusion between the Pakistani military and the United States. He has called it an American plot against him because he took independent positions on many issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has furnished no evidence to make those extraordinary claims. However, his cocktail of anti-America rhetoric and accusations of serious corruption in the government has been lapped up by young Pakistanis.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “64 percent of Pakistan’s population is younger than 30 and 29 percent of Pakistanis are between 15 and 29 (an age group which we define as the youth). Pakistan now has more young people than it has ever had.” A significant part of that youth population appears to have warmed up to Khan’s positions.

With the country’s economy being in a tailspin, the rupee rapidly weakening and rising unemployment the Sharif government cannot afford a challenge from Khan. Ironically, it was after accusing Khan of economic mismanagement that Sharif and his political allies came to power.

The latest drama is a multi-angle fight among the military, government and Khan’s party even as the military has kept a low profile so far.

During a speech last night at a rally in Rawalpindi near Islamabad, known as the country’s military hub, Khan said so-called "neutrals" were behind the recent crackdown against his party. The term “neutrals” is controversial because Khan had earlier used it to refer to the military.

"A plan has been made to place our party against the wall. I assure you, that the Sri Lankan situation is going to happen here," Khan was quoted as saying.

"Now we are following law and constitution. But when a political party strays from that path, the situation inside Pakistan, who will stop the public? There are 220 million people,” he said.

For the better part of the last 75 years of its existence Pakistan has witnessed continuous tensions between the political class and the military. After he first came to power in 2018, there were those who insisted that it was under the benign and helpful gaze of the military. That no longer appears to be the case.

Anthropomorphizing Voyagers

Voyager 1

As a rule, I am not given to anthropomorphizing objects and things. There are exceptions, of course. Two such exceptions being NASA's Voyager 1 and 2.

As a lifelong nerd, I regularly check their status. Incidentally, yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of Voyager 2's launch on August 20, 1977. (Yes, 2 was launched before 1).  We are barely a fortnight away from the 45th anniversary of Voyager 1 which left Earth on September 5, 1977. As of writing his post, Voyager 1 is 14.6 billion miles or 23.49 billion kilometers from Earth while Voyager 2 is 12.12 billion miles or 19.5 billion kilometers. One-way signal takes from Voyager 1 over 21 hours and 46 minutes, which means two-way communication with it takes close to 44 hours. One-way light takes over 18 hours from Voyager 2 or over 36 hours both ways. I am told there are fathers and husbands who respond more quickly than that. (Gratuitous humor). 

When the Voyagers were launched I, a 16-year-old then, was aware of it even though not quite of the scientific complexity of the mission. Information was not available in real time then. It took much longer for me to receive information about the Voyagers, sometimes weeks, than it still takes NASA to have a two-way communication with both spacecraft. 

A comparison that always fascinates me is that since the spacecraft left I have come a distance of 45 years at age 61 but the two are still barely days away in terms the length of time they take to relay data to us.

Coming to the point about anthropomorphizing, in light years, they are not even infants, let alone toddlers. (an infant is under one and a toddler above 1. Hence.) I have often wondered how the NASA scientists who worked on the two missions feel about gradually losing contact with the Voyagers. They are both in interstellar space and have been there for about a decade now. Interstellar, as many of you would know, is the space between stars. Fifty percent of their instruments have been switched off to preserve energy.

NASA updates their distances and velocities in real time while their trajectories every fine minutes. remember the farther they move from us, the staler the data about their locations, trajectories and distances will become because of the lag in the signal time. Eventually, there will come a time when everything will cease and we will not know where they are in interstellar space. Although they are just objects which will soon become inanimate, I am sure they still tug at their creators' heartstrings. Sometimes, they do mine when I look back to my life at 16. With the digits of my age having flipped--I am 61 now--I too feel that I am receding from life as I have known it. 

Soon I too will fade into oblivion but here on Earth. I would have liked it to be in deep space. Come to think of it every point in the universe, including Earth, is deep space in a sense. 

 

 

Rajiv Gandhi: A very short reminiscence

Rajiv Gandhi

 

On Rajiv Gandhi’s 78th birth anniversary today, a short reminiscence.

 

It was the afternoon of March 6, 1991. Delhi’s winter had not fully retreated, and summer had not yet fully crept in. The air was still crisp, and the windows of dear friend and colleague Tarun Basu’s Fiat were rolled down. We were in Parliament’s front parking lot reversing.

 

Tarun, then the editor-in-chief of the IANS wire and I, its chief South Asia correspondent, were animatedly discussing the impending fall of Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar's government after Congress Party president Rajiv Gandhi withdrew its support to him. In that animation, Tarun, while reversing his Fiat, failed to notice that Rajiv’s heavily armed convoy was passing right behind us.

 

In fact, Tarun practically rammed into Rajiv’s vehicle which he was driving. That caused an instant reaction with his security detail leaping out with their guns drawn at us. That is when Rajiv noticed Tarun and I. He was reasonably familiar with us and in any case, he had seen the Press sticker on the windshield of the car.

 

Unlike the tense Special Protection Group (SPG) commandos, Rajiv looked rather relaxed and half laughed and half smiled at Tarun’s screw-up. He did not say anything but I read the expression on his face as "You fucked up." I don't think he ever swore in public.

 

As it turned out, a little over two months after that incident Rajiv was assassinated on May 21, 1991.