50 million kids will join PM to sing Kalam anthem at his tomb in Rameswaram

Rameswaram: About 50 million students from across the country will sing the ‘Kalam anthem’ when Prime Minister Narendra Modi cuts the ribbon to inaugurate the grand memorial of late President APJ Abdul Kalam at his tomb here on Thursday marking the second anniversary of the great patriot’s demise.

The three-minute ‘Kalam Salam’ anthem in Tamil was released by renowned agriculture scientist Dr M.S.Swaminathan a couple of days ago at Chennai. It was penned by famous lyricist Vairamuthu, sung by Sid Sriram to music composed by Ghibran and the video was directed by Vasanth Sai. The Telugu version has been rendered by S.P.Balasubramaniam and the Hindi version by Prasoon Joshi.

“Kalam sir had met five crore students during his several trips crisscrossing the country and they will all sing this special anthem at the same time when our PM cuts the ribbon to inaugurate the memorial at Rameswaram. While the students in Tamil Nadu will sing the Tamil anthem, those in Andhra and Telengana will sing the Telugu version and those in the rest of India will sing the Hindi anthem. Soon we will have the anthem in all the other languages”, said Abdul Ghani of the ‘Dr APJ Abdul Kalam International Foundation’. He said the anthem would be rendered between 1100 and 1103 hours on Thursday.

Prime Minister Modi will also flag off the ‘Sandesh Vahini Vision-2020’ rath that will take off from the memorial at Rameswaram and reach the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on October 15, the 86th birth anniversary of Dr Kalam, carrying pictures, videos and speeches elucidating his Vision-2020 across 17 states, specially targeting the student community that had adored the eternal teacher during his numerous visits to their campuses.

The long bus arrived at the House of Kalam for the final preparations on Tuesday. The family, friends and many admirers of Dr Kalam gathered at the memorial for special prayers during the day. Centurion elder brother of Kalam, Mohammed Muth u Lebbai Maraikayar, led the prayers.