Chennai: From Rameswaram to Rashtrapati Bhavan. That phenomenal flight of a soul that took wings from humble beginnings to the country’s highest office through a distinguished and arduous path of astonishing achievements as a technologist and scientist is now on a transcendental orbit.
Born into a large boatman’s family in the ancient pilgrim island of Rameswaram in south Tamil Nadu to Jainulabdeen and Ashiamma on October 15, 1931, for Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, it was adversity from the very beginning as he grew up as a boy in a home of seven siblings.
Kalam’s father was not educated and naturally he wanted Kalam, who showed an early penchant for mathematics and physics, to study. As gleaned from his autobiography, Wings of Fire, those were days he got up as early as 4 am, went for his maths class and then went to town to distribute the morning newspaper with his cousin Samsuddin.
The famous aeronautical engineer he was to later become, Kalam once recalled how his teacher in Rameswaram lucidly demonstrated the basic principle of aerodynamics by “showing and telling us how birds fly”. After completing his high school from Schwartz matriculation school in Ramanathapuram, Kalam’s destiny to know and fly aircrafts made him take Physics at Saint Joseph’s college, Tiruchirappalli. His sister’s financial help during a crucial phase of his higher education was one thing he never forgot.
Kalam later moved to Madras (now Chennai) in 1955 to study aeronautical engineering at the ‘Madras Institute of Technology (MIT)’, then under the University of Madras and later became part of the Anna University here.
After graduating from MIT, it was by quirk of fate that he joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) in 1960, and began his career by designing a small helicopter for the Indian Army. But as Kalam would recall later, it was his coming into contact with the renowned space scientist Dr Vikram Sarabhai that was to be a crucial turning point in his personal and professional life.
Unabashed to learn from repeated failures in the challenging and nascent world of Indian space science then, Dr Kalam, under Sarabhai’s inspiration and encouragement, made “significant contributions as Project Director to develop India’s first indigenous Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III), which successfully injected the Rohini satellite in the near earth orbit in July 1980 and made India an exclusive member of Space club.” Kalam “was responsible for the evolution of Isro’s launch vehicle programme, particularly the PSLV configuration,” testifies his official profile when he later became the 11th Indian President on July 25, 2002.”
Almost exactly 13 years later, Dr Kalam is no more with us. He was responsible for the “development and operationalisation of ‘Agni’ and ‘Prithvi’ missiles under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, which later took him to handle highly strategic assignments as Advisor to the Defence Minister, and to play a key role in Pokhran-II nuclear tests when A.B. Vajpayee was Prime Minister in 1998.
Dr Kalam’s view that India needed a nuclear deterrence did not go down well with all sections of people. But as a ‘Bharat Ratna’ and an alumnus of MIT, the Anna University’s then vice chancellor, Prof A Kalanidhi, had brought him to Chennai as a distinguished guest faculty, as he felt “it would add immense stature to the university and help enhance its image internationally.” For above all, Dr Kalam, was an excellent, passionate science teacher, reaching out to all with empathy, one reason which won him support of all the main political parties in his Presidential election.
A bachelor, Dr Kalam’s outstanding achievement as President of India was the way he dynamically connected with the youth, the first head of state to so intensely tour the country’s schools and colleges, addressing students across the board and infusing his vision of India emerging a superpower by 2020. This was at a time when the youth was getting alienated from the ruling class and Dr Kalam brought in a new communicative ethos to give them hope with his imaginative and soul-stirring ideas. ‘PURA’- provision of urban amenities to rural areas, was one such ‘mantra’ he gave to the development debate.
While Dr Kalam never forgot his teachers – very recently he called on his old Physics teacher, Rev. Ladislaus Chinnadurai at Beschi College in Dindigul, when he presented him his recently released book, Reignited: Scientific Pathways to a Brighter Future, which Dr Kalam co-authored with Srijan Pal Singh. Even as he engaged with the worldviews of other religions in recent years, there was a less known aesthetic corner to his soul, with his amazing knowledge of both Tamil and Carnatic music and an instrumentalist himself.
