From Rameswaram

Photos of children from Rameswaram

From his small town of Rameswaram to Rashtrapati Bhavan, he’s come a long way. “My story is a story of a scientist tested by failures and setbacks; the story of a leader supported by a large team of dedicated professionals.” In his autobiography, Wings of Fire, he describes himself as “a short boy with rather undistinguished looks, born to tall and handsome parents. I ate with my mother. She would feed me on the floor of the kitchen, place a banana leaf before me, on which she ladled rice and aromatic sambhar, home-made pickles and a dollop of fresh coconut chutney.” Kalam’s beginnings were more than humble. “My father was a boat-owner in Rameswaram. I even sold newspapers in my childhood. After graduating in science from St Joseph’s College in Tiruchi, I went on to do aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology.” More from The Times of India..

The President of India DR. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam 's Speech in Hyderabad .. *Why is the media here so negative?Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat.We are the second largest producer of rice.Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters. Iwas in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the dayafter a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of aJewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in thenewspaper, buried among other news.In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T. Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture,when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.