Humble,unassuming,non-controversial,knowledgable…The list of adjectives is endless when you start raving about Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam-probably the best president the country has seen and the sort of citizen any country would call “valuable” to its development
No matter how many times you hear his “Dream big…Have a vision” speeches, his ideas are inspiring every time he graces stages around the country. This one,again,was a case in point. He calls students as his “friends” every time he refers to them.
The crowd was in raptures right from the moment he arrived, treating him and applauding like they would for a rock star. Such has been the man’s contribution in changing,or to put it mildly,influencing the Indian youth’s mindset and thought process.Addressing the crowd at the inauguration of the University’s Silver jubilee year celebrations, he stressed on the crying need to carry out research in various fields,especially those relating to bringing technology to the common man. One sentence from his speech still rings loud in my mind: “With improved research comes better teaching and better teaching encourages more students to carry out research”…Right on the Bull’s Eye that was.
The University also has a special centre for excellence in Mathematics,named after Srinivas Ramanujan. The former president told the audience the story of how Ramanujan was a genius in mathematics despite being weak in all other areas. He explained that students for the mathematics centre should not be selected based on their regular academic scores.Instead, he asked the management to select students through a procedure which would identify the best math brains and thereby improve chances of producing more “Ramanujan”s…
It was typical of Kalam when he told stories of how Nobel Laureates sacrificed a lot to carry out their researches. The story of CV Raman writing a polite letter to the then President Dr.Rajendra Prasad, expressing his inability to attend the Bharat Ratna awards function,since he had to help a research student submit his thesis within the deadline,was indeed touching.
Overall, it was an interesting speech,which went on for about an hour and a half,leaving the audience asking for more and mesmerizing them….Something I wouldn’t have traded for a holiday’s leisure….
