It was a little boy, living in Thumba, near Thiruvananthapuram, which has India’s rocket base who told me he had seen most of the members of a political party climbing into a Time Machine, which would take them back in time. “They said, there was nothing they could do about the present, so they thought they’d go back into India’s past!” said the little boy, speaking to me in Malayalam.

“I wonder what they’re finding out!” I pondered loudly.

“There’s a black box, that tells you what they’re seeing now,” said the little fellow as he led me to the entrance of the Time Capsule and pressed a switch. I heard the voice of one of the members, “This is marvellous!” he said in chaste Hindi, “Look at all those planes. I told you India had aircraft in those days! Our technology was the greatest, see that plane doesn’t even have wings!”

Another voice piped in, “India had internet thousands of years ago. See I am WhatsApping King Ashoka and see all the Chola rulers from the south have formed a whatsapp group!”

I heard a familiar voice, “Mitron, I can see Mrs Gandhi reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf!” said the familiar voice, “I told you she was the Hitler, not me!”

The door of the machine opened and all the members of the political party stepped out, big grins across their faces, what with fly machines, internet and Hitler type dictators belonging to India’s past. But the little boy was shaking his head and pointing to another machine that was standing next to it. I understood what he was saying and rushed to the group “Sirs, I think there’s been a mistake!” I said humbly.

“Bah you journalists!” said the familiar voice, “Didn’t I tell you Indira Gandhi was Hitler?”

“Didn’t I tell you we had airplanes thousands of years ago!” said another.

“And I whatsapped with King Ashoka!” sneered the other member of the party.

“But sirs!” I said, pointing to the machine they had stepped out from, and gesturing to the little boy who had actually found the mistake, “Sirs, you all entered the Dream Machine by mistake!”

There was pin drop silence as the little boy pointed to the other machine next to this one, “Sirs, he says that that is the Time Machine, this one you all have come from makes dreams and fantasies become realistic! Why don’t we all go down into the Time Machine and see the truth?”

The little boy and I stood next to the Time Machine, as the group just walked away.

“Nobody wants to know the truth!” said the little boy from Thumba, near Thiruvananthapuram in Malayalam as I nodded, “They just want to sell us their dreams packaged as truth..!”