Close encounters with Kalam

When I was asked to review Srijan Pal Singh’s book What Can I Give Life Lessons from My Teacher A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, I was apprehensive as non-fiction is not my favourite genre. I think it’s a bit slow, and I expected the book to be preachy. Thankfully, I was wrong. The book is anything but slow, in fact, I finished it fast! It’s very readable. Singh’s style of writing is quite good and invites the readers to keep turning the pages. But what makes the book interesting is the endearing and absolutely adorable person who figures larger than life throughout its pages.

What works in Singh’s favour is that he just holds a mirror in front of his mentor and by describing his anecdotes and actions gives us an up, close and personal look at A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, his daily routine, travels, thoughts on various national and international issues, his humility and sensitivity. Singh has been clever that way, he lets the readers see what Kalam was all about, for themselves instead of saying anything. This is where his writing and the book scores.

Kalam’s lifestory serves as an inspiration. He was the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. Singh was lucky to have had him as a co-faculty for a course when he was in the second year of his MBA at IIM (Ahmedabad) in 2008. In 2009, when Singh won the gold medal as the best all-rounder at the graduating ceremony, he contacted Kalam to tell him about the medal.

In the course of that meeting, Singh requested a three-week internship with the former President. Within a few months he became an officer on special duty and adviser to the former President of India.

Singh tells us how, at Kalam’s behest, he started writing a diary. In this he recorded his dreams, aspirations, things that inspired him, that troubled him and the things he did to achieve his long-term goals. As a tribute to his mentor, he called it “Kalam diary”. Here it’s pertinent to share an incident from the book that will make the reader smile: Kalam and Singh visited Kentucky, US, in April, and saw small trees blooming with flowers.

When Kalam was told by his hosts that the tree was called dogwood and that it was the state flower, unique to Kentucky, he wasn’t pleased. As the tree with slender branches was earlier used to make daggers, its original name was Dagwood, which, over a period of time, got distorted to dogwood. Kalam refused to call the tree dogwood. Instead, he started calling it April bloomer and even wrote a poem on it.

Another incident that highlights Kalam’s considerate nature is when he and his team travelled to the India’s state capitals. They would stay at Raj Bhavans and Kalam would insist on eating with his staff at the dining table, explaining that if his staff ate separately they wouldn’t be given all the nice things he was served.

The book is peppered with anecdoted that differentiate Kalam from other dignitaries. The writer describes an incident where a famous comedian poked fun at the missile man. Kalam explained to Singh that jokes were meant to be laughed at, that we smile at a joke not at the subject of the joke. He said that if a joke was good we laughed at it and if it wasn’t good, we don’t. There was no need to feel offended as he believed that tolerance to humour was essential to a thinking society.

Kalam started the “What can I give” movement in 2012 to combat corruption, environmental degradation and social evils, holding the belief that the essence of a happy life and a peaceful society lies in one sentence — What can I give

Working as a close aide to Kalam, Singh has been privy to many of his thoughts and dreams, which the popular media was unaware of and he has shared them in his book. Kalam had a soft spot for the country’s youth, dedicating a large part of his presidential tenure to shape their minds. He wanted them to have three traits: righteousness, creativity and courage.

A Bharat Ratna, Kalam was called the “people’s President”.

The book’s last chapter describes the last eight hours of his teacher’s life. I held my breath as I read it. Kalam departed from this world doing what he loved the most: teaching. While delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management, Shillong, he collapsed and died from an apparent cardiac arrest on July 27, 2015.

Once, when a six-seater plane got caught in air turbulence, to console his frightened co-passengers, Kalam shut the window saying that when we can’t control the variables we should learn to ignore the consequences. If we didn’t look at the fear that’s beyond our control, we will find it easier to counter.

By the end of the book, I felt very envious of Singh. Lucky are those who learn by osmosis. Being in the presence of a great man who made every moment of his life a wonderful learning experience, enriched the author’s life.

Rachna Chhabria is a Bengaluru-based children’s author and a freelance writer