People's President called Deogarh writer to thank him for letter

CUTTACK: On the afternoon of March 25, 2007, Pintu Mahakul received a call. When he answered the phone, he was taken aback at what he heard. "Hello, this is Abdul Kalam," the voice on the other end of the line said.
It took a couple of moments for Mahakul, then a 26-year-old student of BPharma, to realize that this was the voice of his childhood hero.
"You're a very talented young man. You need to study hard, just like you made this letter," Kalam had told him.
Mahakul, now a writer, had written a letter to the former President of India, which was 141-metres long and weighed 24 kilograms.
"I wanted him to become the President of my country once again. I wanted to tell him that India needed him. This was what I had written to him," Mahakul told TOI a day after Kalam passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest in Shillong on Monday.
The letter was made of drawing sheets, cloth, and velvet paper with a picture of Kalam on top and a painting of Mother India at the end, painted by Pintu. The letter was an appeal to Kalam to return to Rashtrapati Bhavan, while appreciating his dream for the nation as vision 2020. The letter was written in six languages — English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Odia, Telugu and Bengali. A native of Deogarh district, Mahakul now stays in Berhampur. He was in Cuttack to explore the 1000-year-old city and its lifestyle for his upcoming book.
Some others from the state, who had the opportunity to get close to India's Missile Man, recollected his words of wisdom.
Odishi dancer from Cuttack Meera Das remembers very well her encounter with the visionary. "It was November 28, 2006, when my students and I performed Dasavatar during a national conference of DRDO at Balasore," Das said. Kalam was in the front row.
"After the performance, he came up to the stage and I was trying to touch his feet, when he stopped me and said with a smile, 'You are an artist and a guru, an ambassador of Indian culture, an inspiration for the younger generation.' These words have been an inspiration in my career," said Das
It was a long cherished dream for Das to take a photograph with him. "Amid tight security, I asked him to take a photograph with me but my voice was lost in the crowd."
"Twenty days after the show, I received a package by post. What I saw when I opened it I will never forget." Inside was a photograph in which Das was standing in her Odishi attire with folded hands before Kalam. "The photograph was signed by Kalam," Das told TOI. For Das, it was the best gift she had ever received.