A.P.J. Abdul Kalam An Anecdote-3

In his childhood, Kalam was influenced by several people, one of them being Samsuddin, his first cousin. He was the sole distributor for newspapers in Rameswaram and catered to the reading needs of the 1,000-strong literate population of the town. Dr. Kalam recalls that the newspapers brought news pertaining to the national independence movement, astrology and bullion rates prevailing in Madras. Some people would discuss Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Jinnah as well as Periyar EV Ramaswamy. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, there was an unprecedented demand for tamarind seeds, which Kalam used to collect and sell to a local provision store. When India was forced to join the Allied Forces, there was something like a state of emergency, and its first casualty was in the form of the suspension of the train halt at Rameswaram station. Dr. Kalam recalls this much later in these words: "The newspapers now had to be bundled and thrown out from the moving train on the Rameswaram Road between Rameshwaram and Dhanuskodi. That forced Samsuddin to look for a helping hand to catch the bundles and, as if naturally, I filled the slot. Samsuddin helped me earn my first wages. Half a century later, I can still feel the surge of pride in earning my own money for the first time."