New Delhi, March 16 -- Like a song or a smell, the word 'Bofors' ike a song or a smell, the word 'Bofors' illuminates a time in the lives of my generation. Among the people, spaces and movies that raised us in the 80s was the persistence of 'Bofors,' and its associated words, like 'kickbacks' and 'Win Chadha.'

In the Madras of the time, what The Hindu said was the word to us. And the Bofors scandal was the newspaper's biggest story. It implied that the top echelons of the Congress, including Rajiv Gandhi, may have accepted a bribe to buy guns made by the Swedish company Bofors, once a steel-maker that was acquired by Alfred Nobel, who converted it into an arms maker. (The implication was never proven).

The bylines of Chitra Subramaniam,...