On April 27 and 28, 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping met in Wuhan for an informal summit. There was no agenda and no joint statement. The two leaders walked along East Lake, rode a houseboat and talked over tea. China’s ambassador to India said they spent nine hours together.
The talks between the delegations “went well beyond the budgeted time,” said India’s Foreign Secretary, Vijay Gokhale.
Naam, namak, nishan. Name, salt, flag. The phrase is widely cited as the honor code of the Indian soldier. The Indian site Chanakya Forum explains the three words. Naam is “to uphold India’s and his regiment’s reputation.” Namak is “to repay the debt of having eaten the salt of this piece of Earth.” Nishan is to honor the national flag “and the regiment’s flag/emblem.”
On September 7, 2019, India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission lost contact with its Vikram lander during the descent to the Moon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the scientists at the ISRO center in Bengaluru. “We came very close, but we need to cover more ground,” he said. He ended: “The best is yet to come in our space programme. India is with you.”
As Modi was leaving, K. Sivan, the chairman of ISRO, broke down. Modi held him in a long, tight hug.
In 1980 the Indian psychologist Jai B.P. Sinha described the nurturant task leader. In Sinha’s words, such a leader “cares for his subordinates, shows affection, takes personal interest in their well-being.” A 1990 summary of the model by the researcher Ansari adds that the leader makes this care “contingent on the subordinate’s task accomplishment.”
The model describes subordinates who “depend excessively on their superiors for directions, guidance, and support,” and who prefer a personal relationship with the leader to a contractual one.
In the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata, Krishna comes to Hastinapura as the envoy of the Pandavas. Duryodhana invites him to a feast. Krishna declines. “Envoys, O king, eat and accept worship only after the success of their missions,” he says, in the Ganguli translation.
Duryodhana presses him. Krishna answers: “One taketh another’s food when one is in distress. At present, however, O king, thou hast not inspired love in me by any act of thine.” He goes to the house of Vidura and eats there.
Bada khana, the big meal, is a long-standing custom of the Indian Army and the other armed forces. Officers, soldiers and their families sit down to share a meal. Senior officers are served the first portion. In October 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated Diwali with naval personnel on board the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant and shared a bada khana with them.
In the Valmiki Ramayana, the monkey king Sugriva sees Rama and Lakshmana in the forest and is afraid. He tells his ministers that his brother Vali “must have dispatched them.” His minister Hanuman reports to him about the two brothers.
Hanuman then brings them to Sugriva. Rama and Sugriva “take the oath of friendship before an altar of fire.” Only after this does Sugriva tell Rama that he saw Sita carried off through the sky. He shows him the ornaments she dropped, wrapped in her upper cloth.
Apna samajhna, to count someone as one’s own. The Rekhta dictionary defines it in Hindi as behaving without hesitation in a close or friendly relationship, and counting someone as dear, close, a companion or a confidant, vishvaspatra. Its second meaning is to regard something as one’s own property.
Former students of the Doon School are known as Doscos. Rajiv Gandhi and his brother Sanjay, ThePrint writes, “brought this elite network of ‘Doscos’ into vogue in politics.” Arun Singh, from the school’s 1959 batch, served in Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet.
In January 1985 the Christian Science Monitor described two men around the new prime minister: “One is a trusted cousin. The other, a former schoolmate.” The cousin was Arun Nehru. The schoolmate was Arun Singh.
P.N. Dhar served as an adviser to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. According to Wikipedia, he “was one of her close advisors, who were collectively known as the ‘Kashmiri Mafia’.”