In Story
Failed In My Dream Of Becoming A Pilot
In his book "My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions", Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who specialized in aeronautical engineering from Madras Institute of Technology, said he was desperate to pursue a career in flying.
"Over the years I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream," he wrote.
Out of the two interview calls Kalam got, one was from the Indian Air Force in Dehradun and the other from the Directorate of Technical Development and Production (DTDP) at the Ministry of Defence in Delhi.
While the interview at DTDP was "easy", he recounted that for the Air Force Selection Board, he realized that along with qualifications and engineering knowledge, they were also looking for a certain kind of "smartness" in the candidate.
For former President A P J Abdul Kalam, becoming a fighter pilot was a "dearest dream" but he failed to realize it by a whisker as he bagged the ninth position when only eight slots were available in the IAF.
"I had failed to realize my dream of becoming an air force pilot," he wrote.
He says "I walked around for a while till I reached the edge of a cliff" before deciding to go to Rishikesh and "seek a new way forward".
"It is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives," says Kalam who went on to put his "heart and soul" at his job as the senior scientific assistant at DTDP.
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, usually referred as A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, was the 11th President of India for the term 2002 to 2007. Popularly known as the 'Missile Man of India' he fulfilled his childhood dream at the age of 74, when he became the first Indian Head of State to fly a fighter plane, Sukhoi-30 MKI at the Lohegaon Air Force Base in Pune.
UNSUNG HEROES
Physicist Kalpathi Ramakrishna Ramanathan
ISRO which was known as INCSR or The Indian National Committee for Space Research way back in 1962, was formed under the leadership of the Father of India's Space Programme - Vikram Sarabhai and the renowned physicist Kalpathi Ramakrishna Ramanathan.
K R Ramanathan, an eminent physicist and a meteorologist was born in the Kalpathy Village, Palghat, Kerala State on February 28, 1893.
His father, Ramakrishna Sastrigal was a learned astrologer and a Sanskrit scholar.
Having completed his B.A.(Hons.) and M.A. in Physics from Presidency College, Madras, in 1921 he collaborated as a doctoral student with Dr C V Raman on studies of Molecular scattering of light in liquids and its vapours. His association with metrology started at the Indian Metrological Department and continued for next 20 years, conducting studies in various disciplines of atmosphere notably geo-magnetism and solar physics.
At the age of 55 Ramanathan joined the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) as its first director, which played an important role as the cradle of the early Indian Space Programme, testing the sounding rockets and helping to develop the TERLS or Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station, from which Nike-Apache rocket supplied by NASA was launched in 1963, allowing India to put its first signature in space programmes.
Professor Ramanathan has been awarded many honours at various times of his life like the International Meteorological Organization Prize in 1961, Padma Bhushan in1965, Padma Vibhushan in 1976 and the Aryabhatta Medal in1977.
We lost this great physicist in 1984, known as a modest, wise and serene gentleman.
