हम शस्त्र को पूजते हैं, युद्ध को नहीं। ("We worship the weapon, not the war.") On Vijayadashami, we worship the weapon. Never the war. Shastra Puja is an ancient Indian covenant: strength is sacred, and so is the restraint that governs it. Good intentions alone cannot preserve peace. A nation must possess both the character to exercise power wisely and the capability to defend what it holds dear. A storm is gathering across the world. Established orders are being unsettled, dependencies weaponised, and assumptions about security and sovereignty tested. #India cannot afford to believe that prosperity alone guarantees protection. Our answer must be neither fear nor slogans, but competence, cohesion and the determination to build. I have spent a lifetime around aircraft — flying them, engineering them, building enterprises around them, and trusting them with human lives. The cockpit taught me something that has never left me: courage without judgement is recklessness, and confidence without competence is dangerous. The same is true of nations. Our grandparents’ generation secured our political freedom. Ours must earn the technological and industrial strength to preserve it. That strength cannot be borrowed indefinitely, purchased in haste or proclaimed into existence. It must be built, tested and earned. This year, @KAWAUAVPVTLTD ’s #Divyastra Mk3 achieved its maiden flight with an indigenous Indian jet engine. From concept to first flight in less than a year. Alongside Mk1 and Mk2, it represents a growing family of Indian-engineered unmanned systems. But the aircraft is only the visible achievement. The greater victory is the competence being created behind it. As #Vijayadashami gives way to #Deepavali, I think of the light we owe future generations. Not merely illuminated homes, but enlightened minds. Not merely inherited pride, but earned capability. Not merely freedom remembered, but freedom secured through knowledge, character and collective effort. To our engineers, technicians and test crews; to our partners and the UP Defence Corridor; and to the men and women in uniform for whom these capabilities are being developed — this celebration belongs to you. May #Dussehra strengthen our courage and conscience. May #Diwali bring lasting light, prosperity and harmony to every home. कर्म एव प्रमाणम्। The proof is not the promise. The proof is the flight. जय हिन्द। 🇮🇳

Do something your age cannot explain. Learn to fly. Build something that has no guarantee of working. Run through a desert. Climb the mountain. Hang horizontally from a steel bar and have a completely unreasonable argument with gravity. Whatever you do, never become predictable. There is an unwritten script for ageing. At twenty, begin. At thirty, accelerate. At forty, establish yourself. At fifty, consolidate. Then, almost imperceptibly, we are expected to exchange curiosity for caution, difficulty for comfort, and the unknown for things we already know we can do. What a spectacularly boring way to use a life ... I want the opposite. There is a peculiar danger in becoming accomplished. You can begin living on evidence of what you have already done. Titles earned. Companies built. Aircraft flown. Patents granted. Investments made. Mountains climbed. Yesterday’s difficult things slowly become today’s credentials. Gravity is wonderfully unimpressed by all of them. It does not care about your résumé, reputation or age. It has no interest in who you used to be. It asks one brutally honest question: what can you do now? ... I love that question. Over the years, I have learned that the next version of ourselves is rarely waiting where life is comfortable. It is usually on the other side of the work we keep negotiating with ourselves not to do. The extra repetition. The uncomfortable beginning. The skill that exposes our weakness. The attempt we may fail at. The morning when nobody is watching and there is no applause waiting at the end. We spend our lives looking for breakthroughs. More often, the breakthrough is disguised as the work we would rather avoid ... Perhaps that is why I keep finding places where yesterday’s credentials have no currency. A cockpit. A mountain. A desert. A steel bar. Places capable of humbling me. Places where I can still struggle, still learn, still fail. Especially places where I can still fail. Because one of the great privileges of getting older is not becoming more certain. It is becoming fearless enough to become a beginner again. To shake. To struggle. To occasionally look ridiculous. To attempt something sufficiently unreasonable that people wonder why on earth you are doing it — and then return the next morning and try again. Youth was never the superpower. Curiosity was ... Curiosity has no expiry date. Neither does courage. Neither does reinvention. Neither does our right to begin again. So whatever number sits beside your age, leave something beyond you. One mountain unclimbed. One skill unconquered. One idea audacious enough to frighten you. One dream unreasonable enough to make your pulse rise. Gravity will keep pulling. Age will keep counting ... Let them ... Don’t grow old proving who you were ... Grow dangerous discovering who you can still become.

Some photographs are about the people in them. This one, for me, is about the institution they represent. Standing with me are two former Chiefs of the Indian Air Force — Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari and Air Chief Marshal R.K.S. Bhadauria. In September 2021, one handed command of the #IAF to the other. Between them are more than ~10,000 flying hours and two very different journeys through Indian air power. Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari flew air defence missions during Op #Meghdoot (#Siachen) and Op #SafedSagar (#Kargil), commanded the MiG-29 “First Supersonics” and Western Air Command, helped oversee India’s Rafale programme, and eventually led the IAF. Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria, a Sword of Honour winner and experimental test pilot, flew 26 aircraft types and helped take Tejas through its formative flight-test years before becoming Chief himself — only the second test pilot to lead the IAF. Different aviators. Different journeys. The same Air Force. The same flag. And that, to me, is what we celebrate today. The Indian Air Force is not its aircraft alone. Aircraft change. Technologies become obsolete. Threats evolve. What endures is the institution — its standards, its discipline, its courage, and its ability to turn generations of young Indians into people capable of carrying extraordinary responsibility. Flying teaches you something the ground rarely does: altitude can be gained in minutes, but judgement takes a lifetime. For 94 years, the IAF has turned that judgement into an institution. And its next chapter must be even more ambitious. To young India: don’t only look up and admire the aircraft crossing our skies. Build what flies there next. Build the engine. Write the flight-control code. Forge the alloy. Design the radar. Build the satellite. Fly the machine. Defend the nation. You do not have to wear a uniform to serve India. But whatever you choose to do, do something worthy of her. To those who built the #IndianAirForce, those who guard our skies today, and those who will take it higher tomorrow. Happy 94th Indian #AirForceDay. 🇮🇳 नभः स्पृशं दीप्तम् — Touch the Sky with Glory. Jai Hind.🫡 #IAF94 @IAF_MCC

#jaisalmer . The #thar . Alone. #ambition doesn’t diminish after fifty. It becomes more personal. Solo ascents. High-stakes flying. Endurance runs. At some point, you stop asking what you can prove to the world — and start asking a harder question: what can I still demand of myself? No crowd. No medal. No audience. Just the #desert , the distance, and a promise I had made to myself. Comfort is a terrible way to grow old. Give me steeper #mountains , harder skies and longer roads. I intend to age at the edge of my limits.

Some rooms do not issue press notes. They set the frame the press notes later live inside. @ISpA_India ’s National Advisory Committee is one of those rooms. It does not run the Indian space programme. It does something quieter and more consequential: long-term strategic guidance for the growth, security and sustainability of the ecosystem — policy, capital, industry structure, and the defence-civil seam that most forums treat as two different conversations. At New Delhi, that seam was in the same frame. Departments and ministries. Relevant bodies. Industry. And all three Services. Not as guests of but as co-owners of the same problem set: how India funds, builds, protects and sustains space capability in a world that is re-pricing orbits as fast as it re-prices alliances. I was asked to put capital on the table — not slogans. Investment structures as they actually work. What “sovereign” means when it meets a term sheet, a limited-partner mandate, an export-control regime, and a production timeline. Current realities: where Indian space startups can raise, where they stall, and why readiness (TRL and MRL) is still treated as a slide instead of a valuation instrument. And the part that will decide the next decade whether we write it into the model or not — geopolitics. #Quad, #BRICS, #IMEC, export regimes, contested #LEO, the tightening of #PNT and #ISR as national instruments. Groupings will shape who can sell to whom, who can fly with whom, and which Indian programmes remain Indian when the capital is foreign. NavIC, DefSpace, startup funding — these are not separate agenda items. They are one system. A navigation constellation without a capital stack is a briefing. A startup without a sovereign definition is a valuation event waiting to be acquired. A defence requirement without an industrial path is a import by another name. It was a privilege to watch that room stay on the hard questions. Quiet institutions, shared commitment, and the discipline to talk about money and power in the same sentence — that is how an ecosystem becomes durable.

मम हृदये वस देव, बुद्धिं देहि, बलं देहि, शान्तिं देहि॥ Dwell within me, O Lord. Grant me wisdom, strength, and peace. May #wisdom guide your #path , courage strengthen your #journey , and #peace remain within. Wishing you a blessed #ganeshchaturthi 🙏