A Great Guru- Professor Kalam
“Dr. Kalam died!!!!” Said my friend in a shock.
“Ohh okay!” was my reply while scrolling down Facebook feeds.
That’s all! Nothing more. I cared too little because for me, he was just another president like Ms. Pratibha patil. News of former president’s death was everywhere. From Facebook feeds to youtube recommendations, it looked like we got nothing else to cover.
Among the recommendations was an interview of the president. To kill my curiosity, I clicked and watched it for a couple of minutes and an imaginary time slot allotted for interview soon got filled but my curiosity bucket remain empty and I happened to watch whole interview instead. I was blown away.
I have listed down a couple of qualities of him which sets him above humans
A true Visionary
Interviewer(I)- what are you doing after leaving president’s office?
Professor Kalam(PK)- Working towards a developed India before 2020.
Professor Kalam then lists down nearly a dozen of institutions he was working with.
I- You seem to be more busy after leaving president office. Many people would choose to have a retired life after leaving highest office. Because it will be biggest achievement for them and they seem to have no further aspirations after holding president’s office.
Why are you pushing yourself so hard? What drives you?
PK- Nice question you asked. If you have a vision, it drives you. Vision in front of me is India a super power by 2020.
He was 76 during the interview. Bones might be weak but mentally he was strong, very strong.
A synonym of positivity and optimism
I- What do you think is the biggest weakness of India?
PK- India has all the resources, minerals and we have to do water management. We have highest youth population. What we require is confidence that we can do it.
That’s how you convert negativity into something positive.
A Grateful person
We often tend to forget people over time and with age, that process just speeds up. That is human tendency. But with professor Kalam, it is different. Whenever he is asked, how a leader should be, he sought examples from his life. Incident of professor Dhawan taking blame of a rocket failure upon himself while giving credit of success to his team, remains engraved in his life forever. More than presenting professor Dhawan as a leader, he was being grateful to the then ISRO chairman for making him what he is today.
Practitioner cum preacher
He often said “have big aims, it is a crime to have small aims”, he brought that into practice. Making India a super power in around 2 decades was what he strived for, when he could have easily relaxed and enjoyed pension for the rest of his life. But he had a vision, a vision of an India where no one is sleeping empty stomach, an India where everyone has access to quality medical and educational facilities. That India is surely of dreams and dreams do come true.
Greatest life lessons?
This clip of his talk gave two lessons, first being the answer he replied with for question shot at him and secondly, no matter what level we are at, we must have listening skills.
We humans do find it difficult to bring it in practice and those who are able to do it, surpasses human level.
A True Teacher
As a student, in order to remember something we repeated it everyday. Remember “two oneza two, two twooza four, two threeza six..”? We still remember it because our teacher made us repeat it every single day for a couple of years and until now, we didn’t realize it is actually, “two ones are two, two twos are four, two threes are six”. Professor Kalam was very well aware of this, he made his students repeat the same thing again and again.
The fact that he breathed his last while talking to his students, itself speaks a lot. It is very rare that you breath your last while doing what you like the most.
This was an analysis of this great man who reached to such a level of scientific temper and intellectual capacity, which no human could ever reach. He surely was much more than a human.
Of course, this is not everything about him. But these many qualities also speak about other qualities like being humble, staying down to ground etc and let me not include his achievements in science and technology which I would rather describe with an image
In his book, “Wings of fire”, Professor Kalam wrote “the bloodline of my great-grandfather Avul, my grandfather Pakir, and my father Jainulabdeen, may end with with Abdul Kalam, but his grace will never cease, for it is eternal.”, even though he is not with us anymore, his legacy will remain forever and may I present a small portion of “The Brook” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, but with a slight change
“For men may come and men may go, But the legacy remains forever”