Scientist, Spy, Sinner, Son

On 24 April 2021, during the deadly second wave of Covid, I was admitted to hospital, almost dying, but I survived. This story is not about that. It’s about a wonderful person who died the next day, but I wasn’t aware of his passing until recently. His death had been reported, and the defence minister and others had paid tributes to him, but in the ICU, I hadn’t kept up with the news.

Santhanam (Santy) was one of the quartet that had led India’s 1998 nuclear tests — along with R Chidambaram, Anil Kakodkar and Abdul Kalam. Santy had been picked by Homi Bhabha in the 1960s and sent off to America to study nuclear engineering. Later, he was with India’s spy agency RAW and then the DRDO. But this isn’t about his exploits as a nuclear engineer or spy, either.

Santy was heading the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis in Delhi when I met him as a scholar from a British university, wanting him to supervise my Master’s dissertation. He initially disagreed with my dissertation proposition but took a liking for me. So much so, he put me up at his own residence until I found a place. It was then that I saw another side to the man.

Santy, widowed three years earlier, lived with his mother, 92, and an unmarried son. The old lady was bedridden and had Down’s syndrome. Santy tended to her every need himself.

In between running the think tank, conducting track-2 diplomacy, meeting bureaucrats, ministers and delegations, his day included cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner and feeding his mother spoonful by spoonful three times a day while making one-sided conversation to cheer her up.

Around 8 pm, he would sit down to relax with a glass of whisky. I was a teetotaller, so he would make me a glass of chilled rooh-afza with a slice of lemon (Baba Ramdev, sherbet-jihad?). It tasted magical. He had learnt to mix drinks serving as a bartender while at university in America. The trick, he said, was to maintain any drink at the right temperature.

Asked why he hadn’t employed a caregiver for his mother, he said, “Raghu, although a communist all her life, she’s a tam-brahm. She won’t eat out of anybody else’s hands.”

As my time at the IDSA was coming to an end, he offered me a position to continue at the institute. But I had to quit some months later for personal reasons. As I was leaving on the last day, I knelt down and touched his feet. He was surprised. I told him it was not for being my guide or for giving me a job; it was for the way he took care of his mother. Santy brushed it off self-deprecatingly, “Raghu, all human beings are frauds; only the degree varies.” Pointing to a picture of goddess Saraswati on his desk, the atheist-turned-believer said, “Bow down only to her”. Being an agnostic myself, I said, “But you know I’m not a believer. I believe only in human beings and their capacity for greatness.” Santy dismissed me with a “poda!” in Tamil and walked me to the door. 

In his last years, Santy grew bitter and mostly wanted to be left alone. I respected his wish. I wish I had not.