Introduction

APJ Abdul Kalam is a renowned Indian scientist who went

on to become 11th President of India (2002-2007). He is
very well known across India and is a recipient of India’s
three highest civilian awards – Padma Bhushan, Padma
Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna. Wings of Fire is an
autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam written jointly by Arun
Tiwari and Abdul Kalam. It covers Kalam’s life before he
became president of India and in 2013 another
autobiography titled
“My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions" was
released.

Wings of Fire is an autography of APJ Abdul Kalam covering

his early life and his work in Indian space research and
missile programs. It is the story of a boy from a humble
background who went on to become a key player in Indian
space research/Indian missile programs and later became
the president of India. The book has been very popular in
India and has been translated into multiple languages. I
recently picked up a copy and read it in a couple of days. It
was very engaging initially, but tended to drag a bit towards
the end with lot of technical details and procedural
information of his space research and missile projects.
I loved the initial chapters of Wings of Fire since it gives a
vivid picture of our country during 1930 – 1950s. Kalam was
born in Rameswaram, a southern religious town in
Tamilnadu. The initial chapters provides an interesting
glimpse of religious harmony which existed before India’s
partition,
The famous Shiva temple, which made Rameswaram so
sacred to pilgrims , was about a ten-minute walk from our
house. Our locality was predominantly Muslim, but there
were quite a few Hindu families too, living amicably with
their Muslim neighbours.
……
The high priest of Rameswaram temple, Pakshi Lakshmana
Sastry, was a very close friend of my father’s. One of the
most vivid memories of my early childhood is of the two
men, each in his traditional attire, discussing spiritual
matters.
……
One day when I was in the fifth standard at the
Rameswaram Elementary School, a new teacher came to our
class. I used to wear a cap which marked me as a Muslim,
and I always sat in the front row next to Ramanadha Sastry,
who wore a sacred thread. The new teacher could not
stomach a Hindu priest’s son sitting with a Muslim boy. In
accordance with our social ranking as the new teacher saw
it, I was asked to go and sit on the back bench. I felt very
sad, and so did Ramanadha Sastry. He looked utterly
downcast as I shifted to my seat in the last row. The image of
him weeping when I shifted to the last row left a lasting
impression on me. After school , we went home and told our
respective parents about the incident.
Lakshmana Sastry summoned the teacher, and in our
presence , told the teacher that he should not spread the
poison of social inequality and communal intolerance in the
minds of innocent children. He bluntly asked the teacher to
either apologize or quit the school and the island. Not only
did the teacher regret his behaviour, but the strong sense of
conviction Lakshmana Sastry conveyed ultimately reformed
this young teacher.
Kalam in younger years wanted to be an officer in air force,
however he couldn’t clear the interview. He met Swami
Sivananda after this failure and I found his words to Kalam
interesting and in a way prophetic,
Accept your destiny and go ahead with your life. You are not
destined to become an Air Force pilot. What you are
destined to become is not revealed now but it is
predetermined. Forget this failure, as it was essential to lead
you to your destined path. Search, instead, for the true
purpose of your existence. Become one with yourself, my
son! Surrender yourself to the wish of God,

In the book we learn how Kalam started his career in

Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) and was
involved in the design of a hovercraft. Later he moved to
Indian Space Research which was the brain child of Vikram
Sarabhai. In 1963, Kalam went to NASA facility in
Maryland(USA) as part of a training program on sounding
rocket launching techniques. There he came across a
painting which depicted Tipu Sultan’s rocket warfare against
the British,
Here, I saw a painting prominently displayed in the
reception lobby. It depicted a battle scene with a few rockets
flying in the background. A painting with this theme should
be the most commonplace thing at a Flight Facility, but the
painting caught my eye because the soldiers on the side
launching the rockets were not white , but dark-skinned,
with the racial features of people found in South Asia. One
day, my curiosity got the better of me, drawing me towards
the painting. It turned out to be Tipu Sultan’s army fighting
the British. The painting depicted a fact forgotten in Tipu’s
own country but commemorated here on the other side of
the planet. I was happy to see an Indian glorified by NASA
as a hero of warfare rocketry.
The book covers a lot of "behind the scene" information and
technical details about India’s satellite and missile program
(SLV-3, Prithvi, Agni, Thrisul, Akash and Nag). This might
interest technically inclined readers but is sure to put off
readers who bought the book to get to know Kalam or to
know his principles/ideas. Space and missile programs are
huge complex projects and managing them is extremely
challenging. The book does give a glimpse of the
participatory management technique adopted by Kalam, but
at the same time it doesn’t go into details.
Wings of fire covers Kalam’s personal life only briefly which
is strange for an autobiography. For example, we don’t know
why he decided to remain single or his activities outside
space research (even though we can conclude in the end that
he was married to science and technology).
Kalam is a poet and is a huge fan of poems. The book
contains many of his own poems and his favorite poems.
Here is an example,
Do not look at Agni
as an entity directed upward
to deter the ominous
or exhibit your might.
It is fire in the heart of an Indian.
Do not even give it
the form of a missile
as it clings to the
burning pride of this nation
and thus is bright.
Through Wings of Fire, we come across some brilliant
people who worked behind Indian space research  such as
Vikram Sarabhai and Dr. Brahm Prakash. The book also
contains about 24 photos and I found the ones from the
early days of Indian space program very interesting. This
alone is worth the price of the book!
One of the things that stands out throughout the book is
Kalam’s positive thinking. He held many high ranking
positions in various organizations. Yet in the book he rarely
mentions anything about lethargy/corruption of
bureaucracy or politicians. The secret to his success seems to
be his ability to ignore negative things around him. The
book also gives a clue to his popularity in India. Kalam is a
simple, secular, inspiring humanitarian.

Malgudi days is a collection of 32 short funny and witty stories. Its author
as I have mentioned in the title is R K Narayanan.The stories happen in
malgudi an imaginary town located somewhere on the banks of Sarayu
(a river in South India). Even though it is common to call malgudi is an
imaginary town, you will not feel it is imaginary while reading the book.
You can trace it to any village in south India. The stories carry the scent
and sounds of these villages and you instantly blend into the situations
in the stories.

Malgudi days a bit late than I expected, so I am running late with the
book to be picked up this week. But on to the review.
Malgudi days as I mentioned in an earlier article most of us know the
stories in some way or the other. It was adapted to a TV Series when we
were growing up and we got hooked up to it back then. The children and
adults both had the same amount of interest.
After a long time I was able to get my hands on the book that the Series
was based on. Malgudi days is written by prominent writer R.K.
Narayan, his contribution is well-known and he is a renowned author of
many books but I think no other book of his got so much prominence
and publicity as Malgudi days.
There is a quote on the back cover of the book by Francis King which I
liked and totally agree with he says, “The hardest of all things for a
novelist to communicate is the extraordinary ordinariness of most human
happiness…Jane Austen, Soseki, Chekhow: a few bring it off. Narayan
is one of them”.
This pretty much summarizes the entire book. If you are looking for
some obvious humor, laughs, mystery, drama, love stories, etc. then this
is not what you will get from it. The book will leave no impression on you
when you finish any story (it’s a collection of short stories) but then when
you will be off the book each story will leave a lasting impression on you.
The beauty of the stories as King aptly says is the extraordinary
ordinariness.
Very few authors can capture the human emotions in such a beautiful
way.
In all there are 32 stories and all the stories revolve around a town in
south India called Malgudi (it’s a fictitious town don’t look it up in the
map). The characters in each story are so well crafted that you can
identify them with the few people around you, they are pretty ordinary
characters but then again they are extraordinary in their manners.
I would even commend the TV Series in this regard that they did a pretty
decent job with the book as the people still remember a lot many
characters from that Series still.
All the stories are excellent, it’s hard to pick a few but a few I liked the
most are The Missing Mail, The Doctor’s word, The blind dog, Such
Perfection, Engine Trouble, Forty-Five a month, The Axe, Lawley Road,
A willing Slave, Leela’s Friend, Mother & Son, Selvi, Second Opinion.
In “The Missing Mail” a village postman’s emotions with a household are
displayed when he doesn’t deliver a bad mail to the house until the
daughter of the house is wedded.
In the “Doctor’s Word” it shows how a doctor’s word is considered to be
God’s word and just by listening to a lie how the doctor’s friend cruises
through a bad disease which almost killed him.
In “Forty-Five a Month” a man’s tussle with the love for his child and
fighting with the financial reality is depicted where he wants to take his
little daughter for the movie after promising her but he has to slog in the
office every day and the result he gets is a five rupee increase.
In “Mother & Son” the relationship of mother and son is beautifully
shown when after getting angry with his son she says some harsh words
to him and later she becomes restless when her Son doesn’t come back
late in the night. The love and relationship are beautifully depicted.
Each story is unique and touches some or the other part of our everyday
life and as Narayan mentions in the beginning that the characters of
Malgudi can be found anywhere in the world and the stories have
universal appeal.
I enjoyed “Malgudi days” thoroughly and this has re-kindled a wish to
watch the entire TV Series again, so may be I will try to find out some
you tube links showing the episodes.

Are you surprised by this name and thinking “Who’s that?” or “I’ve never heard of
that name before!” Yes. One of my colleagues asked me the same question that
left me perplexed. I replied saying that I wasn’t familiar with that name, and
subsequently, it was only after my colleague handed me a copy of Malgudi Days
“by R. K. Narayan” that realization dawned on me. Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar
Narayanaswami is abridged as R. K. Narayan. Interestingly, it was author Graham
Greene who had suggested this abridged name when Swami and Friends was
being published.

Only recently did I read the book, but I could instantly recall those memories, from
over 30 years ago down till 12 years ago. I’d watched and been thoroughly
enthralled by all 54 episodes of the television series adaptation of the book—a
collection of 32 stories centred around the fictional town of Malgudi in South India
—that was broadcast in Doordarshan “DD” Television. The opening episode
started sometime in early 1987 and then throughout the 1990’s till 2006. The
eagerness shown in watching “Malgudi Days” on TV was no less in adults than in
children.

Two collections of R. K. Narayan’s An Astrologer’s Days (16 stories) and Lawley

Road (8 stories), and eight new stories, were merged to produce a collection of 32
short stories consequently titled Malgudi Days. None of the stories are interrelated
or even influenced by each other. It is the fictional town of Malgudi, however, that
associates these stories with it, and thus with each other. Malgudi, an imaginary
yet lively and vibrant town, is the author’s creative brainchild.

There was everything in Malgudi that a proper city should have: a little post office,
a grocery shop, Town Hall Park, a vendor selling fried groundnuts, an astrologer
with his cowrie shells and paraphernalia, the Vinayak Mudali Street with four
parallel streets, City X-Ray Institute at Race Course Road etc. Even as you read
through the stories in Malgudi Days, you can actually picture yourself transported
through the streets of a full-fledged city, making it difficult to shake off the feeling
that you have lived in this town.

Simple, city folk whom you come across in real life every day, lend their characters
and breathe life to these stories. There are neither small rulers ruled by more
powerful kings, nor larger-than-life heroes trying to save beautiful damsels in
distress, pursued by intimidating villains. R. K. Narayan would only be writing
about—

“….one of those commonplace dogs one sees everywhere – colour of white and
dust, tail mutilated at a young age…. bred on leavings and garbage of the
marketplace….”

Or Kannan who “…sat at the door of his hut and watched the village go its way.
Sami the oil-monger… coming up the street driving his ox before him….”

Or Thanappa the Postman on his bicycle, pedalling furiously down one of the
streets.

However, the reader is aesthetically made aware of their presence by virtue of their
lively, realistic characterizations, just extraordinary in their manners, and the central
character faces some kind of crisis in life and either resolves it or lives with it, all
communicated with “the extraordinary ordinariness of most human happiness”, as
quoted by acclaimed novelist Stephen King—a comprehensive style so typical of
R. K. Narayan which shows how closely he observes life! Nothing does he miss.
Nothing that others would perceive as “too small” and “too insignificant” fails to
make its way into his writing. He turns his characters into living entities, breathing
life into them with the way he handles their characterization and journey.

Stories that feature in Malgudi Days and the characters it portrays that could be
found in most parts of the world, would appeal to readers across the globe for its
uniqueness and relatability in each of our everyday lives. Each story will leave a
lasting impression on you, making you realize how only very few authors can
capture human emotions in such a beautiful way.

Have you read this book too? If you have, did you like it? If not, was this
review genuine enough to inspire you to read it? Eager to read your
comments on this review or of the book itself.

About the author:

R. K. Narayan was born in 1906 in Madras, and later graduated from Maharaja’s
College in Mysore. He published his first novel Swami and Friends in 1935 at the
age of 29, and subsequently went on to publish numerous novels, five collections
of short stories, two travel books, four collections of essays, a memoir, and some
translations of Indian epics and myths.

Malgudi Days is widely considered to be R. K. Narayan’s most prominent and

popular book, though many of his literary contributions are instantly recognized,
widely acclaimed and genuinely adored. “R. K. Narayan” is a household name in
most Indian families all over the world.

The highly illustrious and famous cartoonist R. K. Laxman is the author’s brother.