weaver shall look into the whole cloth , and he shall examine the loom also .” When I drove out of the laboratory there was not a single soul on the road . I kept thinking about the loom of the broken thread .
Shrimati Gandhi ’ s death was a tremendous loss to the scientific community . She had given impetus to scientific research in the country . But India is a very resilient nation . It gradually absorbed the shock of Shrimati Gandhi ’ s assassination , although at the cost of thousands of lives and a colossal loss of property . Her son , Rajiv Gandhi , took over as the new Prime Minister of India . He went to the polls and obtained a mandate from the people to carry forward the policies of Mrs . Gandhi , the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme being a part of them .
By the summer of 1985 , all the groundwork had been completed for building the Missile Technology Research Centre at Imarat Kancha . Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi laid the foundation stone of the Research Centre Imarat ( RCI ) on 3 August 1985 . He appeared very pleased with the progress made . There was a child-like curiosity in him which was very engaging . The grit and determination displayed by his mother when she visited us a year ago was also present in him , although with a small difference . Madam Gandhi was a taskmaster , whereas Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used his charisma to achieve his ends . He told the DRDL family that he realised the hardships faced by Indian scientists and expressed his gratitude towards those who preferred to stay back and work in their motherland rather than go abroad for comfortable careers . He said that nobody could concentrate on work of this type unless he was free from the trivialities of daily life , and assured us that whatever necessary would be done to make scientists ’ lives more comfortable .
Within a week of his visit , I left for the USA with Dr Arunachalam on an invitation from the United States Air Force . Roddam Narasimha of National Aeronautical Laboratory and KK Ganapathy of HAL accompanied us . After finishing our work at the Pentagon in Washington , we landed in San Francisco on our way to Los Angeles to visit Northrop Corporation . I utilized this opportunity to visit the Crystal Cathedral built by my favourite author , Robert Schuller . I was amazed by the sheer beauty of this all-glass , four-pointed , star-shaped structure that is more than 400 feet from one point to another . The glass roof which is 100 feet longer than a football field seemed to float in space . This Cathedral has been built at the cost of several million dollars through donations organized by Schuller . “ God can do tremendous things through the person who doesn ’ t care about who gets the credit . The ego involvement must go ,” writes Schuller . “ Before God trusts you with success , you have to prove yourself humble enough to handle the big prize .” I prayed to God in Schuller ’ s church to help me build a Research Centre at the Imarat Kancha — that would be my Crystal Cathedral . * * *