A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the youngest child in a close knit family. He was very close to his parents, especially his mother, and had loving relationships with all of his four elder siblings.

He never married. Throughout his life he maintained close ties with his siblings and their extended families. A benevolent soul, he often sent money to his elderly relatives.

He was a very simple person who lived an unpretentious lifestyle. He owned a few possessions—including his beloved veena and collection of books. He didn’t even have a television! A kind hearted man, he was a vegetarian and consumed simple food.

He was born as Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam on 15 October 1931 into a Muslim family in Rameswaram, then in the Madras Presidency in British India, and now in the state of Tamil Nadu. His father Jainulabudeen was a boat owner while his mother Ashiamma was a housewife. Kalam had four elder siblings.

Even though his ancestors had been wealthy traders, the family had lost most of its fortunes by the 1920s and was poverty-stricken by the time Kalam was born. As a young boy he had to sell newspapers in order to add to the family’s meager income.

Even though the family was not financially well-off, the children were raised in an atmosphere filled with love. In one of the books which Kalam wrote decades later, he fondly remembered how his mother would lovingly feed her own quota of food to the children and go hungry herself.

He was a good student and always curious to learn more about how things happened. When he was ten years old, one of his teachers, Siva Subramania Iyer, took the students to the seashore and asked them to observe the birds in flight.

Then the teacher gave the children a theoretical explanation, which coupled with the live practical example, cast a deep influence on young Kalam’s mind. That very day the boy realized that his life’s calling had something to do with flight.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam earned his degree from Madras Institute of Technology in 1957 and joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as a scientist in 1958.

In the early 1960s, he worked with the Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) under the renowned space scientist Vikram Sarabhai. He also designed a small hovercraft at DRDO.

He visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Wallops Flight Facility in 1963-64. Inspired by this visit, he began working on an expandable rocket project independently at DRDO in 1965.

However, he was not much satisfied with his work at DRDO and was happy to be transferred to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1969. There he served as the project director of the SLV-III, India’s first indigenously designed and produced satellite launch vehicle.

In the 1970s, he began making efforts to develop the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits, the nation’s PSLV project was an eventual success; it was first launched on 20 September 1993.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam assumed office as the 11th President of India on 25 July 2002, becoming the first scientist and the first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhawan. Over the course of his five-year term, he remained committed to his vision of transforming India into a developed nation and thus spent a lot of time conducting one-on-one meetings with young people to inspire them to achieve their best.

He proved to be very popular with the citizens of the country and became known as the “People’s President.’ He was however criticized for not taking any concrete actions on the mercy petitions of convicts on death row submitted to him during his tenure. Out of the 21 mercy petitions submitted to him, he acted on only one plea in his five-year tenure.

In 2007, he decided not to contest the Presidential election again and stepped down as the President on 25 July 2007.