IN THIS AGE, wars will not happen. And if they do occur, they will not be long. And if they are long, they will not have conventional or set-piece scenarios. Tanks are obsolete. Aircraft carriers became obsolete yesterday. Who needs planes when we have drones? Drones on land. In the water. In the air. Cardboard drones, didn’t you hear?
I am just telling you all the predictions about the modern battlefield that I have heard in the recent past. Well, before the war between Russia and Ukraine started, that is. To me, all those predictions felt a bit like when people said that nobody would cook at home, now that we have food delivery apps. And that we will not buy cars, because of ride-hailing apps. Most of the predictions about battlefields and wars of the future have not stood up to scrutiny.
“Today, cyber and space domains are emerging as new battlefields, alongside a global battle, over narrative and perception,” said Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at THE WEEK Defence Conclave 2025. The minister acknowledged conventional battlefields and highlighted the new fronts that are now open.
Considering what happened in Pahalgam, his thoughts have acquired a more immediate relevance. Hence, this week’s cover story. In addition to the thoughts from former chiefs General Manoj Pande, Admiral Sunil Lanba and Air Chief Marshal V.R. Chaudhari, articles from Lt Gen. D.S. Hooda, Lt Gen. S.L. Narasimhan, Lt Gen. Rakesh Sharma and
Dr P.R. Kumaraswamy bolster the cover story.
In Untold Stories, Senior Special Correspondent Prathima Nandakumar writes about a jackfruit tree in Seegenahalli that nets its owner, S.S. Paramesha, Rs1 crore every year. In @leisure, Senior Special Correspondent Lakshmi Subramanian writes about how the Chettiar community is trying to restore some of the grand mansions in Chettinad. I have been to the region and can testify to the grandeur of the mansions and the exemplary cuisine.
Our contributor Philip George writes from the Vatican about what he saw and felt as Pope Francis was laid to rest. A shepherd’s funeral, he writes. So apt. The Malayala Manorama’s Chief of Bureau in Delhi, Jomy Thomas, interviewed Sr Nathalie Becquart, the first nun with voting rights in the synod of bishops.
As someone who has seen the Malayala Manorama’s and THE WEEK’s art rooms from their cut-paste days—when artists would cut and paste text and images to make pages—“the kerning is off” is something I used to hear often. Kerning is the spacing between letters or characters in a piece of text. Some editors hate it when artists meddle with the kerning to get more text in. It makes reading tougher, you see. However, I was surprised to hear the word in the context of Pope Francis’s death.
Some experts felt that the kerning was off on the papal tombstone, which simply said Franciscus. One of them said it read more like “F R A NCISC VS”. An interesting view I read was that it was intentional. The writer said that, in Europe, errors were intentionally introduced in tombstones to show humility before God and to underline that no one was perfect.
Interesting thought, as I said. But I have no way of confirming if that is what happened in Pope Francis’s case.