THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nambi Narayanan, former ISRO scientist and head of cryogenics division, said: “I was fortunate enough to be associated with Dr. Andul Kalam and he was one person who would inspire and motivate anyone. For what we all see today about ISRO, the full credit goes to him. He was a person of absolute honestly and unique integrity.
“He was a great human being and his energy levels were something that bowled me over always. He never felt tired. He had no religion and vested interests”, said Mr Narayanana.
“Dr Kalam knew only one thing: work. He was a ‘karmayogi’ all through his life. Now it is time for him to take rest finally.”
“I vividly remember the day I first met him — 12 September, 1961, as that was the day I joined him where in the rocket engineering division, which he headed. Hence he was known as the ‘Rocket Engineer’.
“We were a small team consisting of V. Sudhakar, C.R. Sathya and M.K. Abdul Majeed. We used to sit around and the luxury we had those days was to sit around a table and discuss about rockets in the office.
“In fact Dr. Kalam named the first rocket as D1. When we asked him what does ‘D’ stands for and he quipped, ‘Dreamer’! He was a role model for all of us and we were initially stuck at the office for 4-5 days at a stretch. He used to be unhappy when we would leave after being there for close to a week. We were not allowed to bring in clothes or anything from outside. But later on we used to bring spare dress…”
