‘He had great faith in country’s youth’

PUNE: Eminent astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar said on Tuesday that Dr APJ Abdul Kalam always wanted India to progress fast and be among the top countries.
Paying tribute to Kalam who passed away on Monday, Narlikar said, “He had great faith in the country's youth and would always say that youngsters should be given the responsibility of taking the nation forward by developing expertise in various fields and also by building moral values in them.”
“The best part about Kalam was that whenever he delivered his speeches he used to come down to the level of a common man and speak despite being such a great scientist,” said Narlikar.
He added that he had two distinct memories of Kalam. “The first was when I received the ‘Punyabhushan’ award from him and the second one when he visited the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). Kalam had praised me for the science popularization initiatives which encouraged me,” he said.
“When I was the director of IUCAA, I had written to him to request him to visit our organisation. He wrote back asking how much time would be needed for the visit, so I felt that he had a busy schedule that day in Pune and I asked him for one hour. We had invited some school children during his visit and he spent a lot of time interacting with the children and checking their projects. He spent almost two hours at IUCAA. His sincerity in his work was seen during his time as he interacted like a child with all the school children,” said Narlikar.