Dreams to fuel India

Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam embodied the India he loved: unassuming, industrious and always looking skyward. Born into a modest Tamil family in Rameswaram, he sold newspapers and distributed postcards to help his father. This early lesson in service seems to have never left him.At Madras Institute of Technology he studied aeronautical engineering, then joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation in 1958. A decade later, he moved to ISRO, where he led the SLV-III project that placed Rohini-1 into orbit in 1980-India’s first indigenously designed satellite launch. Colleagues recall his calm insistence that “failure is only a postponement of success” after an early test vehicle sank off the Andhra coast.At DRDO’s missile division in the late 1980s, Kalam oversaw Agni and Prithvi, projects that earned him the sobriquet “Missile Man”. Yet he never lost sight of small victories: he adapted surplus missile materials to fashion lightweight calipers for polio-affected children, ensuring they could run and play.In July 2002, Parliament elected him President by an overwhelming margin. He arrived at Rashtrapati Bhavan with his trademark no-frills outlook, even insisting on paying his own electricity bills.He replaced formal receptions with pop quizzes for visiting schoolchildren. When a shy boy impressed him with a solar-powered model, Kalam slipped him a visiting card stamped “Former President” and offered an impromptu internship at DRDO.Though his name became synonymous with Pokhran-II in 1998, Kalam measured national strength in megawatts of education, not megatons of explosives. His Vision 2020, drafted in 1998, sketched a roadmap for transforming India into a knowledge superpower. He urged every citizen to ask not “What can I take?” but “What can I give?”On July 27, 2015, while delivering a lecture at IIM-Shillong, he collapsed mid-sentence. He was declared dead that evening, having chosen to depart in the very act he cherished most-teaching.Each year on his death anniversary, we recall his simple creed: dream earnestly, work humbly, serve generously. In that quiet resolve, Kalam remains forever at launch-ready status-India's own “People's President” still pointing younger generations to the skies.

Dreams to fuel India

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (Oct 15, 1931-July 27, 2015)

Lovneet Bhatt

Tribune News Service

Dreams to fuel India

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (Oct 15, 1931-July 27, 2015)

Lovneet Bhatt

Tribune News Service

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