no more MOTIVATION!!!

 

    "Wings of Fire : An Autobiography of Abdul Kalam" written by Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari. It casts light on the journey of Dr. APJ's from his childhood to his enormous success in DRDO and ISRO. It reflects how simple discipline, commitment, utmost love and dedication towards your passion can make a person career-wise and as a human being.

The journey started from his hometown, Rameswaram with his father and mother and his sibling and cousins. Its quite unbelievable that religious discrimination in 1930s in a sub-urb/rural area was unknown. A passage dictates it properly : "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." And yet, here we are in 2024, almost 100 years later, still fighting our certain petty matters, pity. 

When Kalam was a young boy, he wanted to join Indian Airforce but only was disappointed in the end. With the help of cousin; Jallaluddin, who was more than a cousin to him, became one of the closest friend to him. From his enthusiasm to learn more and more about aerospace to get the highest civilian award of the nation shows his untimely effort and passion. 

The book also talks about few instrumental people and incidents in Kalam's life which made him what he is today, such as Vikram Sarabhai (father of ISRO), the death of his parents and cousin Jallaluddin, Prof. Satish Dhawan, Dr, Brahm Prakash, his initial failures of SLV-3 ,becoming director of DRDL, success of SLV-3, Agni programmes, getting conferred with Padma Bhushan in 1981, Padma Vibhushan in 1990, Bharat Ratna in 1997 and what not. A man who revolutionized Indian Space Research and inspired and led everyone for making INDIA an indigenous entity in space race is what I consider the biggest achievement of his. 

As a reader, the initial 1930s-1960s gives a pleasant read of his early life later after 1960s it started to give a monotonous illustrations of projects and developments of space research which i felt foreign to myself. And finally, he ends his autobiography with a motivation for the youngsters and his vision of Self Reliance Mission and Technology Vision - 2020, is still a vision unfortunately. 

With love

ΛV