28th
May 2003, IUCAA (Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics) Pune:
The
auditorium was buzzing with college students wearing their ID cards like some
badge of honour and why not, when the cards were their free passes to attending
the 11th President of India’s address to the scientists’
community? That summer morning, the Power Point President as he had come to
be called, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was sharing defining moments from his career.
He was the
Project Director in ISRO for the SLV3 programme, to place satellite “Rohini”
into orbit. The project had already overrun cost estimates and was carrying the
aspirations of the entire sub continent into the exclusive space club. On the D
Day of 1979, goaded by the assurances of the team members, Kalam bypassed the
computer system that was warning of a glitch and manually launched the rocket
which minutes later, plunged into the Bay of Bengal, turning the dream project
into a monumental nightmare. Journalists from all over the world had arrived to
report what would have been a historic event. One would think there would have
been a witch hunt to fix the blame for the utter fiasco on the scientists
involved. Prof. Satish Dhawan the then Chairman of ISRO gallantly stepped
forward throwing himself to the wolves baying for blood (did he
have a 56 inch chest?) and shouldered the responsibility himself for the
disaster , re assuring the media and the nation that ISRO will soon succeed in
the mission- which it did, the very next year. This time around though, he
commanded Kalam to step forward and address the press conference. A leader owns
failure himself, but credits success to his team- was the lesson in leadership
the man who would be President three decades later, learnt that day.
Thunderous
applause rent the air when he recounted this incident to an audience most of
whom were not even born when the event happened. Such humility from the man who
became the nation’s Missile Man!
“I shot an
arrow into the air, it fell to earth I know not where” , my heart would swell
with pride whenever I got to recite this poem in school. What made the man who actually shot a rocket
into the air feel proud? Not the satellite launch but a spin off from defence
technology –his idea for indigenous ,
cost effective cardiac stents and using
light weight carbon-carbon material used for making Agni to make
composite material for calipers for polio patients, thereby reducing the weight
of the calipers from 4 kgs to mere 400 grams! Polio patients who could barely
walk, could now run!
This time it
was not just the ovation but full throated whistles from the young audience
that brought the roof down. It’s befitting that the central government has now named the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan after him.
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