The guiding light : a selection of quotations from my favourite books

156 Pages·2015·0.54 MB·English

by  Abdul Kalam

The Guiding Light
Also by the author
My Journey: Transforming Dreams Into Action
The Righteous Life: The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Governance for Growth in India

First published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2015
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Anthology and introduction copyright © A.P.J. Abdul Kalam 2015

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Contents
Introduction
On Reading
Faith
Belief
Difficulties
Odds and Ends
Tributes
Some Thoughts
Radiance
The Might of Time
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I don’t remember the first book I ever read. It is almost as if books were always
there in my life, a solid, tactile presence that exuded comfort and assurance. Yet,
I know it was not so. When I was growing up, I lived in a small town in southern
India—Rameswaram. It did not have a library, and of course no bookshops. We
studied the holy book, the Koran, diligently and pored over our schoolbooks. For
anything more there were the newspapers. For a while I worked as a newspaper
delivery boy, during the days of World War II, and the feel of crisp, fresh paper
on my fingers is a sensation that still gives me pleasure.
My introduction into the world of books and reading happened through my
friend, brother-in-law and first mentor, Jallaluddin. He was, at the time, when I
was about ten years old, the only fully literate adult inhabitant of the town. He
had studied up to the Intermediate level and then gave up as he needed to start
working and earning. But he had an expansive, curious mind. His interests lay
beyond the concerns of the island and there were evenings when he read reports
from the newspapers and told us of a world beyond the one we inhabited. It was
he who told us about the current political situation, news of the War, prices of
precious metals, and all other such information. I spent a lot of time with him,
watching him read or writing letters for the people of the town which they
dictated to him. Somewhere, the power of the written word imprinted on my
mind. I understood that to know and love reading meant the freedom to travel to
any kind of world I wanted to. It could be the world of religion or philosophy—
what I learnt in my Koran class. Or it could be poetry and imagination. Or it
could be understanding the words of famous people and their lives.
Once I was older, I started reading more voraciously. I was still rather
penniless since most of the little money I got was used to pay my bills while I
studied at the Madras Institute of Technology. However, I discovered a tiny
bookshop at Moore Market in Madras (now Chennai) whose owner was happy to
lend me books for a small deposit. I started reading in earnest, quickly making
my way through the classics, translations, collections of poetry and essays. I
found works explaining concepts from different religions interesting and I
studied the holy books and texts of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, the works
of Confucius. The seeds for this were perhaps laid by my father, who was a
deeply religious man and knew the texts of Islam closely. By now my mind was
getting ever more thirsty and I needed to know many answers.
Once I started working and got deeper into the world of science, the
questions about connections between the worldly and the spiritual intrigued me.
How are we all connected? Does science negate spirituality? How can we keep
our beliefs while delving into matters that require theorems and proofs to
establish their existence? I read the works of great scientists and philosophers
who have studied these matters. Questions of morality and codes to live one’s
life by were also playing on my mind and the works of thinkers like J.
Krishnamurthi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sri Aurobindo helped me to understand
not only myself but the rapidly unfolding world around me. These essays and
books helped me analyse situations better and understand my fellow workers and
their motivations clearly.
One work that has been almost like a code for living for me is the
Thirukural. It was written by saint poet Thiruvalluvar over 2,000 years ago in
the great age of Tamil Sangam literature and consists of couplets or kurals. Each
of these contains a profound truth or moral code, expressed in a few words but
enfolding astonishing wisdom within it. There has been hardly any moment of
conflict or despair in my life that the Thirukural has not helped to resolve.
The other literary form that has intrigued and captivated me from my school
days is poetry. I can still recall a few poems that appeared in our literature
textbooks. Later, I read the works of Shakespeare and Milton and Donne.
Milton’s Paradise Lost has been a particular favourite for decades and I have
read and reread those lines over and over again. The works of Indian masters
like Tagore and Bharatiar and Aurobindo too have deeply touched me with their
visions for humankind and deep nationalistic strain. The immediate passion that
a poem can capture is perhaps unparalleled in any other form. I myself have
written a number of poems and each time I try to distil the essence of what I
want to say into the lines, I think of the great poems I have loved and admired.
As I grew older, I started thinking more and more about this nation of ours