APJ ABDUL KALAM
APJ ABDUL KALAM
BIOGRAPHY
I was born into a middle-class Tamil
family in the island town of Rameswaram in the erstwhile madras state. My
father Jainulabdeen, had neither much formal education nor much wealth; despite
these disadvantages, he possessed great innate wisdom and a true generosity of
spirit. He had an ideal helpmate in my mother, Ashiamma. I do not recall the
exact number of people she fed every day, but I am quite certain that far more
outsiders ate with us than all the members of our own family put together. My
parents were widely regarded as an ideal couple. My mother’s lineage was the
more distinguished, one of her forebears having been bestowed the little of ‘Bahadur’
by the British.
I was one of many children-a short boy
with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and
handsome parents. We lived
in our ancestral house, which was built in the middle of the 19th
century. It was a fairly large pucca house, made of limestone and brick, on the
Mosque street in Rameswaram. My austere father used to avoid all inessential
comfort and luxuries. However, all necessities were provided for, in terms of
food, medicine or clothes. In fact, I would say mine was a very secure
childhood, both materially and emotionally.
I normally ate with my
mother, sitting on the floor of the kitchen. She would place a banana leaf
before me, on which she then ladled rice and aromatic sambhar, a variety of
sharp, homemade pickles and a dollop of fresh coconut chutney.
The famous shiva temple, which made
Rameswaram so sacred to pilgrims, was about a ten-minute walk from our house.
Our locality was predominantly Muslim, but there were quite a few Hindu
families too, living amicably with their Muslim neighbours. There was a very
old mosque in our locality where my father would take me for evening prayers. I
had not the faintest idea of the meaning of the Arabic prayers chanted, but I
was totally convinced that they reached god. When my father came out of the
mosque after the prayers, people of different religions would be sitting
outside, waiting for him. Many of them offered bowls of water to my father who
would dip his fingertips in them and say a prayer. This water was them carried home
for invalids. I also remember people visiting our home to offer thanks after
being cured. My father always smiled and asked them to thank Allah, the
benevolent and merciful.
The high priest of Rameswaram temple,
Pakshi Lakshmana sastry, was a very close friend of my father’s. One of the
most vivid memories of my early childhood is of the two men, each in his
traditional attire, discussing spiritual matters. When I was old enough to ask
questions, I asked my father about the relevance of prayer. My father told me
there was nothing mysterious about prayer. Rather, prayer made possible a
communion of the spirit between people. ‘ When you pray,’’ he said, ‘you
transcend your body and become a part of the cosmos, which known no division of
wealth, age, caste, or creed.’’
My father could convey
complex spiritual concepts in very simple down-to earth Tamil.He once told me,”In
his own time,in his own place, in what he really is and in the stage he has
reached –good or bad- every human being is a specific element within the hole
of the manifest divine Being .So why be afraid of difficulties,sufferings and
problems ?When troubles come ,try to understand the relevance of your
sufferings.Adversity always presents opportunities for introspection.”
“Why don’t you say this to the people
who come to you for help and advice?” I asked my father .He put his hands on my
shoulders and looked straight into my eyes.For quite some time he said nothing,
as if he was judging my capacity to comprehend his words.Then he answered in a
low , deep voice. His answer filled me with a strange energy and enthusiasm:
Whenever human beings find
themselves alone, as a natural reaction, they start looking for company.Whenever
they are in trouble,they look for someone to help them. Whenever they reach an
impasse, they look to someone to show them the way out. Every recurrent
anguish, longing and desire finds its own special helper.For the people who
come to me in distress, I am put a go- between in their effort to propitiate
demonic forces with prayers and offerings. This is not a correct approach at
all and should never be followed. One must understand the difference between a
fear-ridden vision of destiny and the vision that enables us to seek the enemy
of fulfilment within ourselves.
I remember my father
starting his day at 4.a.m by reading the namaz before down. After the namaz,he
used to walk down to a small coconut grove we owened, about 4miles from our
home he return,with about a dozen coconuts tied together thrown over his
shoulder,and only then would he have his breakfast.This remained his routine
even when he was in his late sixties.
I have throughout my life tried to emulate
my father in my own world of science and technology. I have endeavoured to
understand the fundamental truths revealed to me by my father, and feel
convinced that there exists a divine power that can lift one up from confusion,
misery, melancholy and failure, and guide one to one’s true place. And once an
individual severs his emotional and physical bondage, he is on the road to
freedom, happiness and peace of mind.
I was about six years old when my father
embarked on the project of building a wooden sailboat to take pilgrims from
Rameswaram to dhanuskodi, [also called sethukkarai ], and back. He worked building the boat on the seashore, with the
help of a relative, Ahmad Jallaluddin, who later married my sister, zohara. I
watched the boat take shape. The wooden hull and bulkheads where seasoned with
the heat from wood fires. My father was doing good business with the boat when,
one day, a cyclone bringing winds of over 100 miles per hour carried away our
boat, along with some of the landmass of sethukkarai. The pamban bridge
collapsed with a train full of passengers on it.Until then, I had only seen the
beauty of the sea, now its uncontrollable energy come as a revelation to me.
By the time the board met its untimely
end, Ahmad Jallaluddin had become a close friend of mine, despite the
difference in our ages. He was about 15 years older than I and used to call me
Azad. We used to go for long walks together every evening. As we started from
Mosque street and made our way towards the sandy shores of the Island,
Jallaluddin and I talked mainly of spiritual matters. The atmosphere of
Rameswaram, with its flocking pilgrims, was conducive to such discussion. Our
first halt would be at the imposing temple of Lord Shiva. Circling around the
temple with the same reverence as any pilgrim from a distant part of the
country, we felt a flow of energy pass through us.
Jallaluddin would talk about god as if he
had a working partnership with him. He would present all his doubts to god as
if he were standing nearby to dispose of them. I would stare at Jallaluddin and
them look towards the large groups of pilgrims around the temple, taking holy
dips in the sea, performing rituals and reciting prayers with a sense of
respect towards the same unknown, whom we treat as the formless Almighty. I
never doubted that the prayers in the temple reached the same destination as
the ones offered in our mosque. I only wondered whether Jallaluddin had any
other special connection to god. Jallaluddin’s schooling had been limited,
principally because of his family’s straitened circumstances. This may be have
been the reason why he always encouraged me to excel in my studies and enjoyed
my success vicariously. Never did I find the slightest trace of resentment in
Jallaluddin for his deprivation. Rather, he was always full of gratitude for
whatever life had chosen to give him.
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Nice thought
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