Gratis Mind

Here is a collection of links that show the generosity, sincereity and humbleness of Dr Kalam, our outgoing people’s president.

A girl from orissa wrote to our president expressing gratitude for the timely help he did for her two HIV+ siblings.

Kalam had promptly intervened and sent across Rs 20,000 from his own purse to the girl whose parents had fallen prey to the killer AIDS in 2002. “I read from newspapers that Uncle Kalam is completing his term as President. I felt sad that he will no longer be the President. His timely help for my brother and sister has inspired me to fight against the odds.

In his address at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, He told the audience “don’t take gifts that come with a purpose and build families with character and good value system. ”

“On the 25th I will leave Rashtrapati Bhawan after having spent five glorious years there. What I have got are two small suitcases. I will go with two small suitcases,”
.
.
“Yesterday, a well-known person gave me a gift of two pens. I had to return them with unhappiness,” he said, also quoting from the ancient Hindu code of law `Manusmriti’ that by accepting gifts the divine light in the person gets extinguished.

This incident shows how Dr Kalam valued inner beauty over what meets the eye.

“I was thrilled to see a special rose bloom in the Mughal Garden [Images] and such was the excitement that I wanted to share it with the President at the first possible opportunity,” Singh said.

An equally ardent admirer of flowers, especially roses, Kalam did not waste any time and arrived to have a look. “Even as I was telling him how beautiful the rose looked, Kalam had already bent to take in its fragrance. When he stood up, I could read a negative reaction on his face,” he said.

“I regained my composure and mustered courage to ask him about his visible disappointment.

‘Its not so beautiful. A rose without fragrance is not beautiful,” the 75-year-old Kalam said and continued with his argument, “Look Brahma, we should not go with the outward beauty. Rather we should focus on inner beauty and it is fragrance that reflects that beauty.”
.
.
Maintaining 300 acres of flowers, gardens and trees with an army of 200 gardeners was not possible without the guidance and support of the President, says one of the officials working in the President’s estate.

There are nearly 160 kinds of trees spread all over the President’s estate, including the majestic banyans, which moved the President to an extent that he penned a poem on them in which he expressed wonder that these trees gave solace to humans, animals and birds in the harshest of summer heat without expecting anything at all in return.

Two more previously unknown anecdotes related in Nariman`s piece serve to illustrate the kind of man Kalam was. One was that when 53 of the President`s relatives came from South India to visit him in his palace, they were treated with the greatest respect and affection. But Kalam had ordered that he be charged for their stay in the palace on Raisina Hill at the prescribed rate for the use of government-owned accommodation, that a meticulous account is maintained by Controller of the Household of the actual cost of what they ate and no government transport be used for them. Every cent of what was expended on the visitors including hired vehicles were debited to the president`s account and he picked up a tab of over Indian Rs. 350,000 on entertaining his guests. The other related to a leaking roof above his bedroom that had kept him awake one night. No heads rolled for that. He was sure the problem would be quickly fixed. What bothered him was the state of the roofs in the staff quarters elsewhere on the presidential estate.

(Above) A cleaned portion of Rashtrapati Bhavan, where wires and creepers hung till recently (below)