Stars can’t shine without darkness.

—Anonymous

It has rightly been said that before there can be day, there has to be night; and for stars to shine, there has to be darkness. And for the star to shine brightest, the night has to be darker than dark. In Indar K Sethi’s life too, before he could achieve greatness as a Satellite engineer, responsible for creating ever improving communication navigation and surveillance systems through his immense body of work in satellite design, operation, launch and management, there was a period of intense darkness.

HORROR OF PARTITION

He was barely eight years old when the world as he knew it came to a crashing end. His carefree childhood days in Lahore, spent star-gazing from the terrace of his home or dreaming of travelling to distant constellations as he imagined getting close to the millions of stars in the Milky Way or Akash Ganga as it is known to Hindus, came to a rude halt. As the first stone was cast to mark the onset of the worst human tragedy of the time, the Sub-Continental Partition, the little Indar and his family were forced to leave what was once home but had suddenly become Pakistan with just the clothes on their back. One night when they saw whole Lahore around them was burning; his father with his tuberculosis stricken wife and four children walked