17TH August 2009
All the Newspapers are carrying headlines today of how Mr Shahrukh Khan was detained in NewWark Airport for 2 hrs. I was about to close the papers when I read the following article which was inspiring enough to share with you guys,, no its not about how many Indian celebrities detained for security reasons at various international destinations,, it’s a small true story of a driver Mr Kathiresan, Driver to Mr APJ Abdul Kalam.
Attur(Tamil Nadu) Aug 16th
If anyone tried to floor A.P.J Abdul kalam with a tricky question on politics, the former President may well retort : “Hey, Just Ask My Driver,even he knows it”. Kathiresan,47,a school dropout who was Kalam’s Driver in 1980s has become a college lecturer at Arignagar Anna Government Arts College on August 6th, after earning a PhD in History and MA in History and Political Science.
Kathiresan thanks the pep talks he received from Kalam at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad where the technocrat was posted years before he became the President of India.
Achievement of Kathiresan is more than the even Albert Einsteins Driver’s achievement. The Story goes that Albert Einstein’s driver would sit at the back of the hall during his lectures and after some time told the great scientist he could probably give the lectures himself. So they switched places with Einstein sitting at back wearing driver’s uniform. The driver gave the lecture flawlessly but when someone in the audience asked a question he refused to be stumped: The answer is quite simple, I bet my driver at the back could even answer it…”
But Kathiresan learnt the answers himself. Studying by night he cleared his Class X Board, then his Higher Secondary, Then BA and MA in history from Madurai Kamaraj University, an MA in political science from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli and finally his PhD. He had joined the Army in 1979 and was trained as an electrical mechanic in Bhopal before being posted to DRDL as Kalam’s Driver. He left in 1996 to take up a job as supervisor for the chief education officer, Tirunelveli.
Asked if he had spoken to Mr Kalam after becoming a lecturer, he said, “I will write to him. I did not call him because I did not want to disturb him… he is a very busy person who deals with thousands of people every day”.
By sources
