Ram Gupta's eyes snapped open to the wail of a conch shell slicing the humid Delhi night.
Heat clung to his skin. The air reeked of incense and monsoon mud—living smells that had no place in the sterile, climate-controlled hum of his 2025 Bengaluru lab. There, quantum neural nets breathed behind glass. Here, the silence had weight, broken only by a distant chant, a dog barking, and the kerosene lamp's faint crackle.
He lurched upright in a worn armchair, heart slamming. The kurta collar scraped his neck; the cane edge bit his thigh. Paper dust clung to his fingertips, as if he'd been turning files for hours.
This wasn't his secure campus.
No.
This was a modest residence lit by a flickering lamp, walls crowded with a strategist's mind: hand-marked maps of fractured princely states, Congress manifestos annotated with factional arithmetic, dossiers on Nehru–Patel fault lines, notes projecting refugee flows and riot flashpoints. A steel almirah stood half open, folders tied with string spilling like bandages from a wound. An uncapped fountain pen lay on the table, nib stained black.
He grabbed the calendar with both hands.
August 15, 1947.
The date didn't confirm the impossible—it sentenced him to it.
His eyes darted back to the table. A telegram sheet lay among the papers, the kind with punched edges and hurried ink. One line stood out—underlined hard enough to tear the page:
"Foreign communications equipment—advisers insisting on proprietary access. Urgent review."
Ram froze. Not because it made sense, but because it felt familiar in the only way a threat can.
He swallowed, throat tight.
Yesterday—or a lifetime ago—he had been the architect of BharatNet AI, the mind the nation paraded as proof of Viksit Bharat. His systems didn't just forecast monsoons; they anticipated floods and crop failures, optimized irrigation, tightened borders with autonomous swarms, and squeezed famine down into manageable numbers. He had rewritten power into code.
Trusted Minister Rao—boyhood friend—had clasped his hand at the launch gala, eyes shining with pride.
Minutes later, the "celebratory" drink burned like acid.
Rao's voice had been soft, almost apologetic, as the poison took hold—engineered through corrupt deals, foreign backdoors, imported kill-switches disguised as partnerships. The last thing Ram remembered was the floor tilting, the lights dissolving, and his own whisper scraping out of failing lungs:
"Traitor… you'll pay."
Then darkness.
Pain detonated behind his eyes now—white-hot, blinding, as if lightning had carved new memory into his brain. Flashes, not dreams: the Congress Working Committee, three days past. Nehru's soaring idealism shattering against Patel's steel. Gandhi's silence heavy as verdict. Ambedkar's gaze coldly precise.
And then Ram's voice—his own—cutting through the room:
"Panditji dreams. Sardarji builds. In the hours ahead we don't need poetry. We need a unifier who can hold the country when it starts bleeding."
A murmur. Protest. Calculation.
Partition was hours away from igniting the subcontinent. Punjab was already tinder. Delhi's streets were swelling with fear. Princes watched for weakness like wolves. In that moment, Congress didn't choose the most beloved man—it chose the one who sounded like he had a plan.
Gandhi's frail nod. Patel's reluctant endorsement. Ambedkar—moved not by slogans, but by the refugee blueprint Ram laid down like a weapon against chaos.
Votes cascading.
Nehru's face tightening into rage as the room turned.
The pain ebbed. The truth remained:
Ram Gupta—firebrand risen from nowhere—named India's first Prime Minister.
He sucked in air like a man surfacing from deep water, palms pressed to his skull. Reincarnation wasn't a comfort. It was a verdict.
He slammed his fist into the armchair. His tongue still carried a phantom bitterness—2025 poison refusing to fade, betrayal with a taste.
At fifty-two, he'd coded gods.
Now he was thirty-five again, body alive with stolen youth, mind locked on one principle: rip out the poison at its root. No mercy for traitors. No weakness. India would need a blade—ruthless, unbreakable—whatever monster she demanded.
A sharp knock snapped him back.
His secretary, Kishan—a wiry young aide—burst in, eyes wide. "Prime Minister Sahib! The ceremony—everyone awaits at Lal Qila. Gandhi-ji, Nehru-ji, Sardar Patel, Ambedkar Sahib… Mountbatten too. The tricolor rises at dawn! We must leave now!"
Ram didn't answer immediately. He looked once more at the underlined telegram line—proprietary access—and folded it into his fist until the paper creased.
Then he nodded.
His fingers closed around the cold metal of the official seal—kept in the Prime Minister's custody for emergency orders, the stamp that turned ink into authority. Too heavy for an object, too light for a nation. He stood, smoothed his creased kurta with deliberate care, and followed Kishan out.
The door opened, and a roar of "Jai Hind" crashed into him like a tide. For the first time, he didn't feel celebrated.
He felt surrounded.
At Lal Qila's ramparts, leaders assembled under torchlight fixed their gazes on him—Gandhi's compassion heavy with hope, Patel's stern approval edged with caution, Nehru's brooding glare laced with resentment, Ambedkar's scrutiny weighing promises, Mountbatten's polite curiosity held behind distance.
Ram climbed the steps.
Halfway up, his gut twisted. His foot caught the edge of a worn stair. He steadied himself with a palm on the stone—cold, gritty, real—and forced his breathing to slow.
What have I done?
Punjab's riots would devour lakhs. Hyderabad's militias would spill blood in the name of order. Bengal would starve in slow motion. Refugees would flood borders like broken rivers. Kashmir would become a wound that never healed.
No satellites. No servers. No code.
Just telegraphs, trains, bullock carts, and men who broke easily.
His knees threatened to betray him. Sweat stung his eyes. For one heartbeat he imagined turning back—retreating to the kerosene lamp, to paper, to the illusion that thinking was enough.
Midway up the final step, something snapped.
No.
He straightened. The fear didn't vanish; it hardened.
The future Ram had died betrayed. This Ram would fight.
He lifted the seal slightly, feeling its cold bite against his palm, and whispered to the night—not a prayer, a decision:
"Enough."
No more 2025 illusions. This is my forge—sweat, blood, bullocks, and unbreakable will. India rises incorruptible, or I burn with her.
He stepped onto the stage center.
Every eye bored into him—crowds below, leaders flanking, history holding its breath. Doubt smoldered, then turned to steel.
He raised his right hand.
His voice came out steady—like a blade that doesn't shake even when it's about to cut.
He swore the oath as the tricolor unfurled above him, and the roar of the crowd rose to meet the dawn.