The Best Brains of the country may be found on the Last Benches of the Classrooms.
A man who accepts his all, and walks with his all, is the personification of Leadership. A moment rises when all great men cease to live as mere physical humans, and are instead alive in the thoughts and memories of their people for the ideas and notions they live by. Men such are eternal…
The night of July 27th, 2015 was perhaps darker than any Amawasya that India has encountered in a long time. The demise of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, President to India from 2002 to 2007, is a grave loss to the vision of a developed educated India. Although Dr. Kalam ceased to be the official Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army eight years ago, he has always been remembered as (perhaps) the (only) man who led the country into an erudite direction.
The luminance of his fire…
The untold story of Dr. Kalam as a scientist is what would seem to an avid student as a biblical fairy tale. Truly the average Indian, Abdul Kalam was born to a poor fisherman in a small town in Tamil Nadu. But like all real gems, his hard work and perseverance polished him with time. A small boy from Rameshwaram soon became a Physics graduate from Madras University. But his bigger dreams led him to aerospace science, and within a span of four decades – the MISSILE MAN of India. With an Ignited Mind and Wings of Fire, he took flight. Thereafter, the sky was (not) the limit.
Not only is he the subject of the tale, but also the author of his own story as well as the messenger storyteller. Dr. Kalam – before, after and during his Presidency – had often visited and addressed the potent youth in schools and colleges, his consistent notion being that passion and discipline would carve the road to brilliance.
When I met him…
I have had the fortune of meeting India’s greatest President. He humbly accepted the invitation of my school to inaugurate the facility of a “Science Park”. When I look back onto the memory today, there has truly never been another deemed so fit for the job. It is a perfect analogy of all he stood for: opening gates for the young to experiment focus and follow their dreams.
For every Indian who is part of the nation’s youth, there is now a void left behind. Our role model is now an immortal inspiration. He taught us that failure is an inevitable part of success. That hard work IS the short cut. I don’t know how many know this, but he never spoke of luck while speaking to any of his followers. He was always spoken of as an amicable and intelligent teacher, not a gifted one. His ideas and notions, if followed, would bring about a tsunami of benefit to individual and the whole, and we all love him because we know that.
To Sir, with Love.
A cardiac arrest may have separated his heart from its beat, but Dr. Kalam – as the beautiful down to Earth soul with the profound aura – forever lives by us in our love. The generation to whom he defined the term “President of India” shall swear by it, that we will pass on his vision and visionary. He has left behind a legend, a phenomenon, to be realized. And for the Scientist of this Nation, we will materialize this dream as homage to his splendid spirit.
Thank you for everything, sir and may you rest in peace.
