India, Dec. 4 -- This is essentially an anecdotal piece. And yet not wholly so.

Seventy years ago is a long time ago, and what happened at this very time in November and December of 1955 would seem today like a self-indulgent rumination about the past. But the thing that happened then is happening today in a startlingly similar way, making this recollection go beyond the genre of old folks' tales. And that "thing" is the "N thing" - nuclear bombs. Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to India under the canopy of nuclear risk-taking is what takes this column beyond the pyol of stories.

In 1954, the US had carried out horrendously powerful tests of nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, one of which was described as ...