By Raghu Jagannathan
The HR email sliced in like an automated guillotine, its cheer masking the cut:
“Dear Team, thank you for your contribution. We are moving to full automation. Please find your exit link below. Wishing you the best!”
Seven exclamation marks — confetti over a funeral.
Arjun stared at the screen, the cursor blinking in mock sympathy. He lingered on the Sign Out button, savoring his last seconds as a “contributor,” then clicked. In the hush of his spare-bedroom office, he whispered, “My grandfather built wells by hand. I can’t even craft a résumé without Grammarly.” His laugh fell flat, dust on the mahogany desk.
Weeks blurred into a scroll: job portals by day, motivation gurus by night — their pixel-perfect smiles selling seven steps to success while he wrestled with step zero, just rising from bed. Then one sleepless night, tumbling down a digital rabbit hole, he rediscovered 7aum Arivu — scientist, monk, DNA experiment. Bodhidharma, the ancient sage whose wisdom lingered in bloodlines.
A thought sparked: What if our ancestors’ fire—builders, thinkers—still slept in our veins, waiting for a switch to flip?
He tested the theory on Bala at their usual chai stall.
“Courage and curiosity? Baked into our DNA,” Arjun said, stirring his tea like a rogue alchemist.
Bala smirked. “Mine’s glitchy. Remembers Wi-Fi passwords and where I hid the remote.”
“Remember the fort we built in school?” Arjun asked. “Collapsed before lunch.”
“Yeah. We raised temples once,” Bala replied. “Now we doom-scroll memes.”
“Maybe,” Arjun murmured, “we just forgot the code.”
They laughed, but the idea lingered — a spark under monsoon skies.
Change didn’t come through apps or labs. It arrived at his rusted apartment gate — a smudged flyer, taped crookedly:
Volunteers needed — After-school Science Club. No pay.
Behind a half-painted wall, ten kids waited in a dusty room with eyes wide as blank maps.
Arjun skipped code lessons; he taught grit. Scrap motors, cracked circuit boards, cardboard frames — process over product. When a bolt refused to turn, he rummaged through his grandfather’s old toolbox. His fingers closed around a hand-forged spanner, its iron smooth and warm, worn by callused palms. Faint Tamil letters were etched along the handle. He twisted — the bolt yielded — and something inside him stirred: a pulse bridging generations through sweat and steel.
A month of sparks and fumbles birthed a clunky robot that sorted bottles. It whirred to life, shoving plastic into “Recycle.” The kids erupted, a roar like a satellite launch.
Then the setback: Priya stopped coming. Her parents called it “frivolous distraction.” Arjun’s rhythm faltered. Had he built another doomed project?
The world tested him again. An NGO rep cornered him after class, clipboard sharp.
“Funds for local empowerment?” she chirped.
He gestured to the robot. “We’re empowered. Need motors, not handouts.”
“Our mandate’s capital,” she said coolly. “Cute project, but unsustainable without scale.”
Her words sliced deeper than intended. After she left, he scribbled in his notebook:
Two Robins—one grabs headlines and gold, the other steals despair. I’ll take the latter.
A ripple formed. The kids led clean-ups, shaming slackers. The retired mechanic next door started teaching wiring basics. Streets brightened, fatigue thinned like fog.
Asked about funding, Arjun just smiled: “DNA.”
Then came a consultancy offer — steady pay, a ladder back to normalcy. Temptation whispered. But one afternoon, Priya returned, clutching a fresh blueprint. “Sir, what if the robot also plants saplings?” she asked.
Arjun fused both worlds, channeling gig earnings into club supplies. Bala dropped by, noticing the light in his friend’s face.
“Job secured, yet you’re glowing brighter than any salary. What’s the secret sauce?”
Arjun fixed a kid’s torch, letting its LED blink alive. “External fixes flop,” he said softly. “Upgrade the core.”
Bala grinned. “Bodhidharma reborn?”
“Nah,” Arjun replied, passing the torch. “Local Robinhood. Stole my own inertia. Yours next?”
Now his mornings begin with uploads — kids’ wonky creations drawing cheers online. DNA pings, he calls them. One went viral, pulling donors without a pitch deck.
His final post reads:
“Ancestors forged civilizations from stone. We rebuild with scraps and stories. The Robinhood Gene isn’t blood-bound — it’s in the hands we extend. Find the switch. Flip it.”
When things break — plans, gadgets, moods — Arjun mends. And somewhere beneath the solder and laughter, the gene hums, steady as breath.