A Night with Abdul Kalam

A Night with Abdul Kalam

Even though the mother nature gifted us a bunch of precious resourses to enjoy our lives,and live peacefully, An hour of horror has arrived this time. People have been warned to stay home to survive. This "stuck home"period takes me to the last time that I had to stuck  home. It was just after finishing my third attempt in A/L s. To the best of my memory, I had to stay around one and half months till I find a job to spend the time until my university entrance.

Yes it's really hard to bear it up. Workaholics who strive towards goals will have to manage at their best to spend time without work.

I was offered two job opportunities after several attempts. One of them was a bank officer post which is one of most the ordinary professional jobs. And the other one was challenging and it was not familiar to the background I was in. To make the period before the University entrance more fruitful and strange I choosed the second , " Book Shop Assistance".

I was pushed into an ocean of books, in relating huge number of subjects and thousands of authers. Though the duty was to care about customers and also to keep the book racks in a better manner I tried to read at least the gists of the books that I had to wipe or to keep straight on racks.

On that way I strongly believe that, the dust of the books , the spider nets in book racks rarely , the weight of the bundles of books paved me the way to see the world in new perspectives.

The value of the opportunity to study something about human body languages and the chance to learn difference behaviours of customers can never be measured as It was an experience which could never be gained within my life.

The most unforgettable experience there, I had to face was, the night shift I spend there in the month of September when the International book fair was held.

After working until 3am I went to have a nap since I was extreamly tired by working more than 15 hours at a strech.

The nap was under the book rack of Autobiographies. Till the sleep finds me I took "Wings of Fire" by Arun Thiwari and Abdul Kalam and tried to read a bit.

All the arguments and the problems which have been occurred regarding COVID-19, reminds me the  above incident spontaneously.

Because "My  father  could  convey  complex  spiritual  concepts  in very  simple,  downto-earth  Tamil.  He  once  told  me,  “In  his own  time,  in  his  own  place,  in  what  he  realy  is,  and  in  the stage  he  has  reached—good  or  bad—every  human  being is  a  specific  element  within  the  whole  of  the  manifest  divine being. .  So  why  be  afraid  of  difficulties,  sufferings  and problems?  When  troubles  come,  try  to  understand  the relevance  of  your  sufferings.  Adversity  always  presents opportunities  for  introspection.”

was stated on the very first page of the book.

This paragraph can never be delete from my mind because, the nap had become a long sleep, cuddling "Wings of Fire" on my chest, when the book shop manager awoke me around 7am.

Theekshana Vidyasekara

Faculty of Agriculture