An Immigrant’s Christmas Eve

We could have been turned away at the border. But a law enforcement officer granted my family a few days of freedom. On the night that we first came to the United States — Christmas Eve, 1979 — my mother, my brother and I were what President Trump would probably call illegal aliens. Like most […]

Abdul Kalam a true secularist

APJ Abdul Kalam born on 15 October 1931 and died 27 July 2015 was an Indian scientist who served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied physics and aerospace engineering. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India’s civilian space programme and military missile development efforts. He thus came to be known as the “Missile Man of India” for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal organisational, technical, and political role in India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

Abdul Kalam a true secularist

A P J Abdul Kalam was just a name to me until sometime in 2000, when I had to necessarily meet him on a personal mission. I was CBI Director, and he Principal Scientific Adviser to the PM. He had his office in South Block and the meeting was arranged courtesy my college classmate T […]