The year 1996 drew to a close under the weight of an unseasonal chill, but within the Patel Empire, the atmosphere was one of feverish, productive heat. The "Digital Dharma" was no longer a project; it was a relentless, national-scale operation. The success of the initial "Bharat-Net" rollout had silenced the remaining skeptics and unlocked a torrent of public and political will. The mandate was now to accelerate, to scale, to connect every district headquarters by the end of the following year.
Harsh Patel was no longer a CEO; he was a conductor orchestrating a symphony of steel, silicon, and human ambition. His days were a blur of high-level strategy sessions in Delhi, grueling site inspections in remote locations, and late-night design reviews in the humming silence of Bharat Labs.
It was in the Labs that the next frontier was being mapped. The "Sanskrit" processor, the heart of the "Bharat-Net Terminal," had proven its mettle. But Deepak and his team of IIT wunderkinds were already looking beyond. Spread across a vast digital whiteboard was the preliminary architecture for the "Sanskrit-2." Its goal was not just to run government software, but to handle the complex graphical interfaces and data processing demands of the commercial world that would inevitably bloom on the digital highway they were building.
"The 'Sanskrit-2' will be our bridge from e-governance to e-commerce," Deepak explained, his pointer tracing pathways on the schematic. "It will be the engine for the businesses of tomorrow."
Harsh observed, his mind making the connections. The fiber-optic cables of BharatNet were the roads. The "Sanskrit" processors were the vehicles. Now, they needed to build the destinations—the digital marketplaces, the news portals, the entertainment hubs.
This realization sparked a new, clandestine initiative. He tasked a small, elite cell within the Aethelred Trust, now christened "Aethelred Ventures," with a new mission. Their focus shifted slightly from American tech giants to identifying and funding Indian startups—the first generation of entrepreneurs who saw the potential of a connected India. He was planting the seeds for the digital ecosystem that would ride on the infrastructure he was building.
The scale of his influence was now undeniable. When he spoke at an industry conference, the halls were packed not just with businessmen, but with cabinet secretaries and foreign ambassadors, hanging on his every word about "leapfrog technologies" and "the post-industrial developing economy." He had become the de facto architect of India's technological future.
This role brought a new kind of isolation. The higher he rose, the fewer his peers. The men he had started with—Deepak, Sanjay, Vikram—were now captains of their own vast divisions, their concerns focused on their specific domains. They saw him as their leader, their visionary, but the gulf between his panoramic view of the future and their operational realities was widening.
He found a strange solace in the data. Late at night, he would pore over the real-time dashboards of the "Bharat-Net." He watched the number of active terminals tick upward, the data traffic flow between cities, the map of India slowly lighting up with digital nodes. Each new connection was a validation. Each megabyte of data was a silent vote of confidence in the future he was building.
On New Year's Eve, as fireworks exploded over Mumbai, Harsh stood alone on the terrace of his home. The city sprawled below him, a tapestry of light and shadow. He thought of the boy in the Bhuleshwar alcove, desperately fixing a broken radio. That boy's world was so small. The man he had become was responsible for wiring an entire subcontinent, for shaping the destiny of a billion people.
The weight was immense, but it was a weight he had chosen. The pursuit of mere wealth had felt hollow. The pursuit of power for its own sake was a sterile game. But this—building the literal and digital foundations of a new India—this was a purpose that could fill a dozen lifetimes.
He was no longer just Harsh Patel, industrialist or investor. He was Harsh Patel, the architect of tomorrow. And as the clock struck midnight, ushering in 1997, he knew the blueprints were only getting bigger. The foundations were laid. Now, it was time to build the skyline.