Thursday 15 October 2015

APJ Abdul Kalam's 84th birth anniversary




Lesser known facts about him:
President Kalam is known to write his own thank you cards.
As humble and generous the man is, President Kalam is known to sign his own thank you cards. One instance is when Quora user Naman Narain drew a sketch of Dr. Kalam and sent it to the President. To his surprise, the President sent him a thank you card, with a short handwritten message and personalised with his signature.
Once during an event, Dr. Kalam refused to sit on a chair that was designated for him – because the chair was larger in size than the other chairs!
At a recent convocation of IIT-Varanasi, Dr. Kalam was the Chief Guest. There were five chairs on the stage, the centre one being for Dr. Kalam, the other four designated for the top university officials. Noticing his chair being bigger in size than the others, Dr. Kalam refused to sit on it and offered the Vice Chancellor to sit in stead. The VC couldn’t, obviously.
No doubt, another chair was made available immediately for the Honourable former President!

President Kalam has given up all his life savings and salaries to a trust he founded named PURA (Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas).
The government takes care of the President of India as well as of all the former presidents. Knowing this, Dr. Kalam during his tenure as President decided to give away all his wealth and life savings towards a fund that works towards providing urban amenities to rural population. Apparently, Dr. Kalam called up Dr. Verghese Kurien, the founder of Amul, and asked: “Now that I have become the President of India, the government is going to
look after me till I am living; so what can I do with my savings and salary?”
Tribute to a legend.

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