The unexamined life is not worth living, ’’ said Socrates more than two millennia ago. Here, we have in print, a well-examined life of one of the icons of the post-colonial technological renaissance of the country.
his autobiographical account has been one of the most inspiring I’ve read in recent years. His life has been most selflessly devoted to his country, and rewarded most deservingly, with the highest civilian award of the country, the Bharat Ratna. The book also goes beyond biography, and serves as an excellent practical guide to R & D management, on how to design and build institutions, mentor and inspire men, to success and fulfillment. The account often goes deep into his own personal philosophy, austere beyond the reach of most average householders, and fortunately for posterity, records his philosophical and spiritual insights in a most accessible way, in spite of his own modest disclaimer, ’’I am not a philosopher.’’
This man, who spent all his life ’’learning rocketry’’, also learnt many valuable lessons on how to manage men, matters and materials, while building up the country’s defense R & D Programs, as also its technological capabilities in space and atomic energy.
Kalam chooses to organize the autobiographical material into four sections: Orientation, Creation, Propitiation and Contemplation, devoted roughly to the first 32 years (1931-1963), the next 17 years (1963-1980), another 10 years (1981-1991), and beyond.
If for Arun Tiwari, ’’writing this book has been like a pilgrimage, ’’ then for me, reading it has been an equally stimulating and uplifting journey through a mind riding high on the wings of science and soulful spiritualism. Kalam’s exhortation to all of us is that we should give wings to the divine fire we are all born with and have within us, and this will ’’fill the world with the glow of its goodness.’’
As a president he is doing his own stuff in his own distinctive style, we can only wait for some breakthrough somewhere.