The studio lights gleamed against the glass panels as the camera floated across the set, catching the edge of the giant LED wall behind the anchor desk. The ticker at the bottom of the screen seemed almost frantic, numbers dancing green and red, but none could compete with the headline blazing in gold:
"EDGEMINDS IPO SHATTERS RECORDS: $18.2 BILLION - INDIA ENTERS THE AI AGE."
The camera tightened on Neeta Sharma, India's most trusted business anchor. Her voice carried a rare weight tonight, less like a market update and more like a chronicler of history.
"Good evening, viewers. You've seen the ticker, you've read the headlines, but let me say it again. EdgeMinds AI has just concluded the largest IPO in India's history - raising more than eighteen billion dollars. To put that in context, Hyundai Motor India's offering in 2024 raised 3.3 billion, a record then hailed as impossible to beat. EdgeMinds has multiplied that more than five times over. But more than numbers, this is a turning point. For decades India's IT industry has been known for services, for talent exported abroad. Tonight, we step onto the global stage as creators - with an innovation born in Chennai, refined in Bangalore, and now celebrated across the world."
She turned gracefully toward the semicircle of guests seated beside her. "And to help us understand the magnitude of this moment, I am joined by a panel that needs little introduction. Rajiv Mehta, CEO of Infosphere Systems, the man who redefined enterprise software in Asia. Sonal Deshpande, co-founder of QuantumCloud Technologies, whose AI fintech platforms are used by millions. Arunabh Sinha, Chairman of DigiCore Solutions, one of the fathers of our IT infrastructure. Devi Narayanan, CEO of Yantra Labs, strategist and scientist. And finally, Mithun Tiwari, who has led Infosoft into becoming one of India's greatest companies. Welcome, all of you."
The camera caught each face in turn - Rajiv leaning forward, calm and analytical; Sonal, smiling with a spark in her eyes; Arunabh, dignified and grave; Devi, poised, her smile modest; and Mithun Tiwari, sharp and steady, the weight of his company on his shoulders yet the glint of excitement unmistakable.
Neeta leaned in. "Rajiv, let's begin with you. For the ordinary Indian watching tonight - the farmer in Mandya, the teacher in Shillong, the shopkeeper in Surat - what does this IPO actually mean?"
Rajiv adjusted his glasses. "Neeta, it means India has shifted from being a participant to being a leader. For years, we've been proud of our IT exports, of the brilliance of our engineers. But tonight, the world is looking at something different: a homegrown algorithm, Vajra, that can do what the best of Silicon Valley and Shenzhen cannot. Run advanced AI on the simplest devices. Where others require billion-dollar data centers and the latest GPUs, Vajra runs on a battered desktop, on a ₹5,000 phone, on a medical monitor in a rural clinic. For the people you mentioned - the farmer, the teacher, the shopkeeper - this isn't just an IPO. This is power, knowledge, and opportunity flowing into their hands."
The screen behind him flickered to life with a montage: a farmer in Andhra Pradesh holding a basic handset, receiving crop forecasts in Telugu; a girl in Jharkhand bent over a tablet as an AI tutor corrected her grammar in Hindi; a nurse in Patna's district hospital monitoring vitals on a decade-old machine, now whispering alerts in Bhojpuri.
The images faded back to Rajiv, whose voice softened. "This IPO is not just money for investors. It is reach for India."
Neeta turned to Sonal. "Sonal, you've often compared AI to electricity in the nineteenth century. Why is Vajra different from what the global giants already offer?"
Sonal clasped her hands together. "Because Vajra is for everyone. Today's models are like luxury palaces: massive, glittering, but inaccessible. They demand cutting-edge chips, cloud subscriptions, energy bills only Fortune 500s can afford. For ordinary Indians, they are irrelevant. Vajra is like the lantern you hang outside your home - small, sturdy, burning bright enough to light the village. It compresses and re-architects intelligence so efficiently that tasks which once required racks of GPUs can run on the humblest processor. That's why this IPO is not just India catching up - it's India leapfrogging."
The screen shifted again: global cloud server farms devouring electricity, compared against a village school running Vajra off solar panels. Sonal gestured toward the image. "This is liberation, Neeta. And let's be clear: this begins with one man. Professor Raghav Bhattacharya. He built the foundations. He designed the mathematical core. And then, in an act of extraordinary humility, he gave it to his daughter, his brightest student. She has carried it into the world, but the seed - the seed was his."
The camera cut back to Neeta, her expression tinged with reverence. "Arunabh-ji, you've seen this industry rise from the days of dial-up. What strikes you about Professor Raghav tonight?"
The elder statesman folded his hands in his lap. His voice was deliberate, each word chosen. "What strikes me is dharma. I was his student at IIT Madras, forty years ago. To us, he was not merely a professor. He was a god. His chalk strokes were like mantras. His patience, his rigor, his warmth - they gave us courage to dream. While others chased foreign salaries, Raghav stayed. He recorded his lectures and uploaded them freely. He translated his textbooks into half a dozen languages. He visited schools in villages where children sat barefoot on mud floors and taught them to code. He never asked for payment. He never asked for recognition. And yet, the nation insisted on honoring him - Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, national medals. Not because he desired them, but because he exemplified the nobility of teaching itself. His words to us were simple: 'Knowledge is not mine to keep. It is mine to give. That is my dharma.' Tonight, that dharma has given birth to EdgeMinds."
There was a pause before Neeta spoke again. "And tonight we also have voices of the new guard. Devi Narayanan, CEO of Yantra Labs.You led Yantra Labs into global leadership in ethical AI. What does EdgeMinds mean to you?"
Devi gave a modest smile at the mention of her brother before speaking. "Neeta, EdgeMinds matters because it is not just powerful, but responsible. Too often, AI is a commodity controlled by a handful of companies abroad. Their models are large, centralized, and extractive - they harvest data, they lock users out, they decide who benefits. Vajra, by contrast, is lightweight and distributed. It gives control back to the user. A farmer doesn't need Silicon Valley's permission to run his forecast. A teacher doesn't need a foreign subscription to teach her class. EdgeMinds is saying: sovereignty belongs with the people who use the technology. That is why tonight matters."
The ticker pulsed: YANTRA LABS +12% ON EDGE MINDS PARTNERSHIP.
Neeta turned to the youngest on the panel. "And Mithun Tiwari - you lead Infosoft, one of the crown jewels of Indian tech. You've been called one of the great builder-CEOs of our era. What does this moment mean to you personally?"
Mithun's voice was warm and steady. "Neeta, I knew India had the raw talent, the hunger. What we lacked was a spark. Tonight, EdgeMinds is that spark. Ananya Bhattacharya is that spark. She embodies what every Indian parent dreams of: brilliance, humility, courage. And her father, Professor Raghav - he is what every student dreams of: a teacher who never withholds. This IPO is not just a financial event. It is a cultural milestone. India is not merely consuming AI. India is creating it."
The camera cut back to Neeta, her voice low and deliberate now. "Viewers, you have heard it. A father who gave his life to democratizing knowledge. A daughter who has turned that gift into a company that vows to revolutionize every corner of our economy. EdgeMinds has two arms - a commercial wing that powers global industry, and a pro bono arm that uplifts NGOs, farmers, teachers, and small businesses. Their motto? Sarvesam Bhavisya - together, into the future. Tonight, it feels less like a slogan and more like a promise."
The screen filled with a fresh montage: a farmer smiling as Vajra predicted rainfall; a schoolteacher in Kashmir using an AI translator; a factory line in Pune humming more efficiently; children in a village sharing a solar-powered tablet.
Neeta looked up. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, all of this converges at the Palace Grounds in Bangalore. More than twenty thousand people have gathered to celebrate the largest IPO in our history. You've heard the analysts. Now, it's time to hear from the woman at the center of it all - Ananya Bhattacharya."
The feed cut from studio to stadium. The Palace Grounds blazed with light, fireworks crackling over the turrets. The roar of the crowd was deafening. Drones swooped over banners of the tricolor and giant Vajra logos glowing on screens the size of buildings.
The announcer's voice thundered, echoing through the grounds and across every television set in India.
"Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we make history. Tonight, India enters the AI age not as a follower but as a leader. Please welcome to the stage - the pride of our nation, the youngest CEO to take a company public, the woman whose vision is shaping our future - Ananya Bhattacharya!"
The crowd erupted, twenty thousand voices shaking the ground. The camera zoomed in as Ananya stepped into the spotlight, radiant in a silk sari tailored with modern lines, her hair in a sleek bun, her smile as dazzling as the fireworks above. She waved, her laughter caught by the microphone, and every heart seemed to leap with her.
And as the nation held its breath, the speech began.
The roar of the Palace Grounds was like the sea, twenty thousand strong, lit by floodlights and fireworks, their voices carrying into the Bangalore night. The tricolor shimmered on every giant screen, and above it blazed the words:
Sarvesam Bhavisya - Together, to the Future.
Ananya Bhattacharya stood at the center of it all, radiant in a silver-blue silk sari with modern lines, the EdgeMinds logo pinned discreetly at her shoulder. Her smile was broad, her eyes alight, her voice carried with the confidence of someone who had been groomed for greatness and had embraced it fully.
She raised her hand and the crowd quieted, but their energy thrummed, electric, waiting for her words.
"Tonight," she began, her voice warm, lilting, full of charisma, "is not my night. It is our night. Yours, mine, all of ours together. EdgeMinds does not belong to me. It belongs to every engineer who stayed up through the night debugging code until their eyes blurred. To every designer who redrew interfaces a hundred times until a farmer in Andhra could read it easily. To every teacher who trained a generation to think critically, and every small-town dreamer who believed in us when no one else did.
This belongs to India. And tonight, India steps into the future."
The audience roared, a chant rising, but she lifted her hand again, her tone softening.
"I want to begin by thanking the people who built this dream. My team - my family. The engineers, researchers, our partners, our investors, and every person who took a leap of faith with us. You carried us on your shoulders. And tonight, the world stands in awe of what you've done."
She gestured toward the front rows, where rows of EdgeMinds employees stood, clapping and laughing through tears.
"But above all," she said, her eyes shining now, "I want to thank one man. The man without whom none of this would exist. A man who is more than my father. He is my guru. He is my anchor. He is my hero. Professor Raghav Bhattacharya."
The crowd erupted. The cameras zoomed in on the silver-haired man in the front row. He was rising to his feet, embarrassed, his hands fluttering as if to wave away the attention. But the ovation swelled louder, rolling over him like thunder. People chanted his name:
"Raghav! Raghav! Raghav!"
Tears glistened in his eyes as he pressed his palms together, bowing to the crowd. Beside him, Dev clapped earnestly, his cheeks flushed with quiet embarrassment, but the camera cut away quickly.
Ananya let the noise roll, then spoke again, her voice rising over it.
"You call him the architect of Vajra. The genius who imagined what others thought impossible - intelligence that could run anywhere, on anything, for anyone. And yes, he is all of that. But to me, he is more. To me, he is the man who sacrificed everything - his comfort, his ambition, his recognition - so that the world could have this moment."
Her words hung in the air. The camera panned across the audience, faces rapt, many mouthing the word sacrifice.
"Do you know what it means," she continued, "to give your life to teaching? To walk away from riches, from fame, from the allure of foreign shores, to stand in a classroom in Chennai? To pour your heart into chalkboards and textbooks, into recordings and free videos, into translations for children you may never meet? He could have led any lab in Silicon Valley. He could have built empires. But he chose to stay here, in India, because his dharma was clear. He is a teacher. His dharma is education."
A montage filled the giant screen behind her - archival clips of Raghav in a modest classroom at IIT Madras, chalk flying across a blackboard while students scribbled frantically. Footage of him recording lectures late into the night, his voice patient, his explanations simple yet profound. A grainy video of him in a dusty Odisha village, surrounded by barefoot children who laughed as they typed their first lines of code on battered computers.
Ananya turned back to the crowd, her voice softer now. "I grew up with this. I watched my father live for his students. I watched him choose their future over his own comforts. I watched him give and give and give, never asking for a thing in return. Not money, not fame. Only the joy of seeing knowledge spread. That is who he is."
The screen was now filled with images of his books: The Architecture of Intelligence, translated into multiple Indian languages. Mathematics for the Mind, an open-source text used in schools across Asia. And clips of his awards, the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan, as presidents and prime ministers placed medals around his neck.
"But even those honors," Ananya said, "were not what mattered to him. Do you know what he told me, after receiving his medals? He said: Ananya, my dharma is not to seek fame. My dharma is to give knowledge. Everything else is dust."
The crowd erupted in applause, but this was different now - not wild cheering, but reverent. One would be hard pressed to find someone with dry eyes in the audience.
"And then," she continued, her voice thick with emotion, "there was his greatest achievement. The work of decades. The culmination of a lifetime of thought. Vajra. An algorithm so powerful, so efficient, so revolutionary that the world had never seen anything like it. And what did he do?"
She paused, letting the silence build. The cameras found Raghav again, his lips pressed tight, tears streaming freely down his cheeks.
"He gave it away," Ananya said, her voice breaking slightly. "He gave it to me. His daughter. His student. His disciple. He handed me his greatest work and said: Take it forward. Polish it. Shape it and release it to the world. He gave me his life's work as a gift. What greater sacrifice can a teacher make?"
The crowd gasped, many on their feet now, clapping furiously. The cameras swept across them - young engineers, old professors, industry leaders, all moved.
"This company you see before you," she continued, her arms sweeping out across the stage, "is not mine. It is his. It is yours. It belongs to every student who learned from his lectures, every young engineer who grew up with his books, every child in a village who typed her first code because of his videos. It belongs to every person he touched with his dharma. EdgeMinds is the flowering of his seed. And I am privileged to be one of the gardeners who tended it."
The crowd surged into another chant:
"Raghav! Raghav! Raghav!"
Raghav bowed again, overwhelmed, his hands trembling as he pressed them together.
Ananya's voice rose again, firm, commanding. "And that dharma - Sarvesam Bhavisya - is now our motto. Together, to the future. It means we take no one for granted. We leave no one behind. This company has two arms. The first, our commercial wing, will bring Vajra into every major industry - from banking to medicine, from logistics to energy. We will make India the hub of global intelligence.
But the second, our pro bono wing, will carry Vajra into the fields of Elango in Kumbakonam, into the shop of Bikram in Gangtok, into the classroom of Neha in Purvanchal. For them, AI will not be a distant dream. It will be a daily reality. They will learn faster, trade smarter, heal better. They will discover and invent things even we cannot imagine.
No longer will knowledge be the privilege of the few. It will be the birthright of all."
The screen behind her filled again - Elango receiving rainfall forecasts on his phone, Bikram analyzing markets in Bhutia, Neha solving physics problems with her AI tutor. The crowd roared, but many in the front rows - young engineers, professors, alumni of Raghav's classes - were openly weeping.
Ananya turned again, her voice softer now, confessional. "When I was little, I thought my father was the strictest man alive. He never let me off easy. He demanded I work harder than everyone else. At home, he was loving, yes. Doting. He tucked me into bed, he told me stories, he celebrated my birthdays. But at school, in the lab, in the office - he was unrelenting. I would come to him with a code I thought was brilliant, and he would look at it and say, 'Do it again.' I would cry. I would beg. And he would say, 'Do it again.' Until it was right. Until it was excellent.
And now, I see what he gave me. Not just his knowledge. Not just Vajra. He gave me his standard. His belief that I could be more. His faith that I could carry his dharma forward. Tonight, everything I am, everything EdgeMinds is - belongs to him."
The crowd was on its feet again, thunderous. Fireworks burst overhead, casting the Palace Grounds in showers of light.
Raghav beamed through his tears, overwhelmed with pride. Dev clapped beside him, his expression moved by emotion.
On stage, Ananya lifted her arms. "Sarvesam Bhavisya!"
The crowd roared back, louder, unified.
"Sarvesam Bhavisya!"
The chant echoed into the night, drowning out even the fireworks.
And there, at the heart of the celebration, the guru beamed, his daughter glowed, and the nation celebrated the triumph of dharma.
The chant of "Sarvesam Bhavisya!" rolled across Palace Grounds like monsoon surf breaking on a wide beach. Spotlights combed the night. Confetti cannons sighed, then went still. Ananya waited-breath measured, eyes bright-until twenty thousand people settled again into a listening hush.
"When we designed Vajra," she began, her voice low and precise, "we did not only design an algorithm. We designed a promise. That no child's future will hinge on one gate, one gatekeeper, one person's permission. That every home will have a tireless teacher. That no mind will ever again be stranded for want of access, or silenced by someone else's pride. That is the oath we took. And this is why."
She let the pause bloom.
"I want to tell you a story."
On the sky-screen behind her, nothing literal appeared - just a charcoal wash of clouds, the hint of a road, a sliver of crescent moon. The images let her words paint.
"A boy grew up in Tirunelveli. A small house, a smaller room. A secondhand desktop his uncle had hauled on a bus from Chennai, its fan screaming like a cicada when it ran. On good days the internet held steady; on most days it stuttered and died. He learned anyway. He learned with buffering icons as his companions, with lecture thumbnails as talismans, with open-source repos as his gurukulam. He learned from a master-the man whose books were stacked under his pillow, whose voice flowed from his speakers at midnight: proofs and priors, gradients and graphs. He watched, rewound, tried, failed, tried again."
The road on the screen sharpened, shivered into a ribbon of pixels; a cursor blinked in the dark.
"Years passed. The boy grew quicker with failure. His notebooks filled. He earned no credential to hang on his wall. But he built. Piece by piece, draft by draft, he built a system he couldn't stop thinking about. It would learn efficiently on tiny chips, adapt in real time, and share what it learned-like a clever friend who whispers a trick and then insists that everyone hear it too. He called it nothing. It was just his work."
She smiled, briefly, almost to herself.
"And then one day, the master came to a nearby town for an inauguration. The boy washed his only ironable shirt, pressed it under a heavy dictionary, and stood in the last row of a hot auditorium. He listened to the master speak on the democracy of education-how knowledge should flow to the furthest hamlet, how teaching was dharma, not theatre."
Faces in the stands brightened, nodding. The cameras cut-briefly-to Raghav in the front block, haloed by warm light, surrounded by garlands and dignitaries. He sat with his characteristic stillness, that gentle, teacherly half-smile. He did not move much-he never did on stages-but his eyes gleamed at the word "dharma."
"When the speech ended," Ananya said, "the boy pushed through the crowd-past garlands, past photographers, past the protocol-and fell to the master's feet. Sir, he said, you are the reason I know anything. Please let me show you what I have done."
She let the line hang. In the stands, people held their breath without knowing why.
"The master could have said no. He could have said later. He could have let his handlers usher the boy out into the hot street with polite words and a generic blessing. He did not. He said ten minutes."
There was a gentle ripple of approval.
"In a borrowed classroom, the boy's hands trembled as he logged in. His prototype was not polished. It did not have a logo, a brand, a press deck. But it worked. He typed a line. It adapted. He starved it of memory. It adapted. He threw power fluctuations at it through a cheap UPS that chirped like a distressed bird. It adapted. The master leaned forward. He asked it to switch modalities-vision to sound to text-and the edges held."
Ananya's right hand, at her side, beat a very small rhythm. "The master frowned. Not in displeasure-yet-but in attention. He asked for tests. He asked for more tests. He asked for tests that students at the best labs had failed that year. The boy obliged-stumbling, sweating, apologizing for unclean code-and the system met him. It did not always win. But when it lost, it learned, fast, as if it had been waiting to be challenged."
The screen filled with abstracted test harnesses-boxes and arrows, lines of code hinted at, never legible.
"The master's curiosity sharpened into professional interest. Who guided you? he asked. The boy said: You did. Your books. Your lectures. Your papers. Sir-sometimes the only voice in my room is yours. The master's mouth twitched. He had heard this before in many forms. Usually, it warmed him. Today, something… sharper pricked him."
A hush tightened around the grounds.
"Do you know what it is to meet yourself outside yourself?" she asked softly. "To meet-suddenly-your own shadow, your own echo, your own future and past colliding in someone else's eyes? It can be the sweetest recognition. Or it can be a test."
The cameras did not cut to Raghav now. They stayed on Ananya. But a low murmur moved through the VIP rows, almost inaudible. Ananya didn't look down.
"The master began to suspect theft. Show me your records, he said. The boy opened his commit logs. They went back years. The master checked the timestamps. He cross-checked libraries. He asked, sharply, whose idea is this? The boy showed the notebook where the idea had first scrawled itself across a bus ticket's back-five years earlier. The master read a page, then another, then circled a lemma and forced it apart and asked three questions at once, like he did with doctoral students. The boy answered. Not elegantly. Not with polish. But with the ferocity of someone who has fought a problem alone at 3 A.M. for one hundred nights."
A brief pulse of applause. Ananya did not pause to drink it.
"Recognition flickered in the master's eyes then-just a flash-like a match struck in wind. He had, after all, built a life seeking this exact flicker in the faces of students. He had told thousands across a thousand classrooms that teaching was dharma, that when you saw the light catch in another mind you bowed to that light because it was not yours; it was the world's."
Her tone shifted so slightly that only the front rows felt it. "But dharma is simplest in speeches and hardest in the breath between two heartbeats."
Silence. You could hear the hiss of a distant smoke machine.
"After recognition came… reckoning. Quietly at first. If this boy is what he seems, then he will change the field, thought the master. He will be the name people say. Then, a sharp caught breath: Maybe sooner than my disciple will.* Then, And the foundations? The papers? The scaffolds I erected for decades-what will become of them in the way the world talks? Who will remember where the steps began?"
Ananya's face was open, unaccusing; her words were the ones any storyteller might use when human frailty entered an otherwise pure frame.
"The master asked for one final test," she said quietly. "One he had given only to his most gifted Ph.D.s. It was not meant for undergraduates, let alone a boy without affiliation. The boy did not know it was not meant for him. He listened. Then he said, shyly: I have not thought of it exactly that way. But-may I show you something nearby? And he moved the code three lines, whispered to it as if to a friend, and the system found its own transform-not the same answer as the test demanded, but a neighbor that could be proved equivalent with a little algebra and a little faith."
The audience exhaled as one.
"It was too much," Ananya said. "Curiosity-what a beautiful first instinct-tipped into fear. Fear tipped, almost imperceptibly, into pride. The kind of pride we do not confess to ourselves because we think we are immune to it. The green monster does not roar; it breathes silently, sits beside you on a borrowed classroom chair, and says, Protect what is yours."
She watched the crowd watching her. "The master smiled at the boy. He blessed him. He told him he would help. He would help him finish this work and bring it to the world with proper rigor and proper care. He said: There are costs. There are obligations. You have used my work to climb this far; there must be dakshina (customary offering to one's teachers) - not money, not a garland, but an offering of what you have made back to the river that nourished you. The boy bowed his head. He said he would do anything. He meant it."
A dry leaf skittered across the stage. Somewhere, far beyond the grounds, a siren drifted and died.
"The master set conditions," she said. "He said: First - turn over your entire codebase and notes to me. We will formalize this experiment. We will ensure it does not carry mistakes you yourself cannot see. The boy nodded, hesitant, but grateful for his guru's guidance. Then the master said, very softly: Second - you will not publish or present this work as yours. Not now. Not later. You will contribute to it quietly, on my team, as the river flows into the ocean to the benefit of all."
The audience shifted, a wave of discomfort moving like grass under a certain kind of wind.
"The boy's face changed," Ananya said, and her voice was tender.
"Confusion first-because this did not align with the speeches he had heard, the sermons on democracy, the parables of teachers who lit lamps and moved aside. Then… shame. Because if the master said this is proper, then who was the boy to disagree? Who was he to hold his own work apart as if it were sacred? His mind ran through the last five years: the nights of hunger; the buffering wheel; the stack of notebooks thinned by thumb and elbow; and he thought, I owe everything to this man's voice and words. What is my name compared to that?"
Ananya did not look away. "The master added a third condition. You must not build this elsewhere, he said. You must not work on this again outside my team. Perhaps he believed he was protecting the boy. Perhaps he truly thought this was the safest path. Perhaps he had begun to think of the work as his, the boy as one more bright assistant to be cared for and kept from harm."
A long beat. The night pressed close.
"The boy asked for a day," she said, almost a whisper. "He went home. He did not sleep. He sat on the floor with his notebooks. He read the first page from five years ago, where the idea had arrived like thunder, and he cried. Not loud. Just a quiet leaking-salt and proof he was still human. He thought of a life with a name and a life without one. He thought of the word guru and what it had meant to him-remover of darkness-and wondered whether the darkness he felt now was his or another's. In the morning, he returned. He prostrated himself. He said: Sir, I agree. Not because I cannot do it alone, but because I would not have begun without you. I will be the unseen hand. Please make sure the work reaches the world."
She let the last line fall like a bell.
Around the grounds, people shifted. Some wiped at their eyes. Others stared at their shoes. A few looked toward the VIP block without meaning to, then looked away quickly, ashamed of their own curiosity.
Ananya's gaze swept gently over them all. "You may ask: Was the master a villain? No. Villains are easy to spot and therefore easy to fight. He was a human: brilliant, exhausted, adored, and suddenly afraid. He assured himself that he was protecting the work from premature exposure, protecting the boy from a hostile world, and protecting his own careful scaffolding from being misunderstood. He did not notice how the story rearranged itself so that the center stayed in his hands."
She stood very still. "This is the hinge," she said. "This is the reason I began with Vajra. Because in a world where one person can shut a door, the test of a guru's dharma is lonely and precarious. Because in a world where a boy's only teacher is a single human voice, his faith can be used against him. Because in a world where the only way forward is through a master's blessing, the master carries more power than any one person should."
Her eyes shone. "Vajra changes that geometry. It gives the boy a thousand teachers, so he can compare counsel with counsel and learn to discern. It gives the master a thousand witnesses-so that when he is tempted to hoard, the world says lovingly, Share. It gives the work a thousand paths-so that if one door closes, none of us must wait five more years for another to open."
Now she let the screen flood with images: a village library with solar panels on its roof; a girl in Ladakh speaking a Marathi lesson and hearing it corrected kindly; a fisherman in Kanyakumari planning tides with a voice interface that worked even when the rains knocked the grid sideways; an elderly woman in a Dharavi workshop asking a question in Bambaiyya Hindi and getting an answer that made sense to her, not to a textbook.
"This is why we built EdgeMinds," she said, voice steady again. "Not to replace masters, but to multiply them; not to replace dharma, but to support it in the moments when even the best of us falter. We built it so that no boy would ever again sign away his life's work out of misplaced devotion, and so that no master would ever again feel alone with the burden of gatekeeping."
A tremor of applause started, then hushed itself, as if the crowd had decided the right thing was to listen.
Ananya turned her head and looked-not at the VIP dais-but at the far edge of the grounds, where the floodlights met the trees. "There is another part to the story," she said softly. "The work did reach the world. It was tested, refined, formalized. It became a backbone others could stand on. It carried a river's name, not a boy's. It generated value that some called record-breaking. Many were lifted by it. And yet-one person learned, quietly, that the river had begun as a rain in a single room."
A small smile, private. "How do I know this? Because I, too, have sat at a desk at three in the morning, and when stuck I have asked for help from someone who should not have had the answer-and did. I, too, have read commit logs that did not brag but told the only truth that matters: who touched what, when, and why. I, too, have seen how humility leaves fingerprints that pride cannot erase."
She raised her head. The air itself seemed to lean in.
"And so, tonight, I will not hide the boy behind a parable. The boy is here. He has been here all along. He sits quietly at the edge of the light, headset around his neck, clipboard in his hand, as if his only duty is to keep others on time. But he has already given more than any of us can measure. His name is Dev."
The cameras swiveled like hawks. A single spotlight arced down to the staff row, pinning him in its beam. Dev froze, pale and trembling, his lips parting without sound. The headset slipped down his shoulder, clattering against his chest.
Ananya's voice softened, tender and unshakable. "He is my guru. My first guru taught me how to code, how to reason, and how to pursue excellence. But Dev taught me what it means to give. To build without vanity. To let go of what is dearest, not because you are weak, but because you believe in dharma. I learned humility, sacrifice, and devotion from him. And without those, no algorithm, no matter how elegant, can change the world."
The crowd stirred, then roared-half disbelief, half awe. The chant of "Dev! Dev! Dev!" rose ragged and raw, rolling like surf across the Palace Grounds.
Raghav sat rigid in his chair. The cameras found him, but his face was carved marble: no twitch, no flinch. Only his hands betrayed him, clenched too tightly around each other in his lap.
Ananya lifted a hand toward Dev. "Come. Please."
He shook his head. Once. Twice. But the chant only swelled, and the spotlight refused to release him. His legs moved before his mind caught up. One step. Another. Then the stairs, each one like stone.
When he reached the stage, Ananya did not wait for him to find words. She crossed the floor, set down the mic, and before the world-before her father, before twenty thousand witnesses, before millions on screens, she bent to the ground and touched her head to Dev's feet.
The world shattered.
Gasps. Shouts. The chant fractured into disbelief, then fused into something wilder, louder. Fireworks misfired in the distance, drowned out by the roar of voices.
Dev swayed as if struck. He stooped, frantic, trying to lift her, muttering, "No, no, no… please, Ananya, don't - " but she only rose enough to look up at him, eyes wet, face radiant.
"This is my dakshina," she said, voice hoarse but ringing even without the mic. "The recognition you never asked for. The truth you never claimed. Tonight, let the world know: Vajra is yours. EdgeMinds is built on your gift. And I… I am your disciple."
The crowd surged to its feet. Some wept openly. Others clapped until their palms stung. Reporters shoved mics at stunned CEOs, who muttered words like "unprecedented" and "historic" without knowing if they spoke sense.
And in the front row, Raghav Bhattacharya sat frozen, the spotlight brushing his cheek. His eyes glistened, but whether with rage or grief, no camera could decide.
Backstage, the roar thinned to a muffled buzz. Raghav stood by the flight crates, jaw tight, eyes rimmed red. Dev hovered a pace behind, still as a shadow.
Ananya stopped before her father and set the mic down on a coiled cable. "Baba," she said, steady. "Guru first means dharma first. If obedience asks me to keep a lie, I will disobey."
Raghav's mouth worked. "You humiliated me."
"I ended a theft," she said softly. "Yours… and mine. I took what he offered because I wanted to believe you were only protecting the work. But you were also protecting your place in its story. I can love you and still say that."
Silence stretched. Dev moved to slip away. Ananya caught his sleeve. "Stay. If you truly believe in dharma baba… you know what to do."
Raghav looked at Dev at last. Not as the man he had considered to be his aide, but as his teacher - the maker of Vajra. His fingers, clenched white all evening, unhooked one by one.
"You came to me with faith," he said, voice rough. "I answered with fear and envy. I told myself I was guarding rigor, but I was only guarding my name." He swallowed. "I am sorry beta (son)."
Dev shook his head instinctively. "Sir, please -"
"No," Ananya said. "Dakshina belongs in the other direction tonight."
She turned, lifted the mic again, and walked back onto the side-stage. The cameras found her as the house lights rose a shade.
"Friends," she said, "our story must be better than our reflex. EdgeMinds will correct the record now, fully and forever."
On the sky-screen, legal language condensed into three lines anyone could understand:
Vajra: Primary Inventor - Dev Shanmugam.
Co-Inventor - Raghav Bhattacharya.
EdgeMinds Founder & Steward - Ananya Bhattacharya.
Ananya continued. "Effective tonight: Dev is the Co-Founder & Chief Scientist with equal vote on research governance. We're transferring patent priority and first-author credit to match the truth of the work.
We're endowing the Eklavya Commons-a perpetual, open repository where fundamental models and proofs cannot be privately gated once they pass community review. And we are instituting the Thumb Clause in all research contracts: no advisor at EdgeMinds, partner or internal, may require a student or unaffiliated maker to surrender authorship, future work, or right to publish as a condition of mentorship. Not here. Not anymore."
There was a stunned beat as everyone froze in shock for a moment - and then the sound came back louder than before like Tsunami. It was chaos.
Ananya wrapped a strip of white athletic tape around her own right thumb. "Until every legacy attribution is corrected," she said, "this hand will not sign another paper."
She turned to her father. "Baba, if you taught me dharma, help me keep it."
Raghav stepped forward, older all at once. He faced Dev and, with no cameras prompted, bent and touched his fingertips to Dev's feet. Dev jerked back in alarm; Raghav straightened with a small, broken smile.
"Forgive me my guru," he said. "And… please teach me."
Dev struggled to answer. He was overwhelmed that his god was bowing before him. He murmured. "Sir… I can never teach you - but I… I will be blessed if you continue to work with me. There are no disciples here. Only partners."
He held out his hand. Raghav took it. The crowd saw only two silhouettes at the stage edge-three, when Ananya's hand closed over both.
On the main screen, the EdgeMinds motto reappeared:
Sarvesam Bhavisya - Together, to the future.
This time, the word together meant the names were in the right order.