What is Freedom ?

Dear Friends,

When I ask myself this question “What is Freedom?” It took me a while to reflect the meaning of real freedom. Once there lived a parrot which desperately wanted get out of the cage and every 15 minutes it used to scream “I need freedom”. One of those days a go getter happened to see the suffering, he negotiated with owner and paid a price to free the parrot. The parrot happily stepped out and thanked the go getter for the freedom, it roamed for a while in the free air and came back again to the cage, locked itself and started screaming again “I need freedom. I hope you will be able to draw parallel to our freedom, we are like that parrot we make hue cry for freedom but really not aware what to do with that freedom. We praise and cherish freedom fighters but failed to cherish the freedom they gifted us.

My definition of Freedom is the willingness and ability to do more and live more despite the constraints and challenges we face in our everyday life. It’s about "what you do with what you have" and "not to worry about what we don’t have". What’s that Abdul Kalam had in his childhood ?, Today many of us have more than what Kalam had except the lion heart and sense of freedom to live his potential. I would like to narrate an incident that happened during his college days @ Madras Institute of Technology.

One of the earliest such episodes from his life happened when he was a student of aeronautics at the Madras Institute of Technology. His design teacher there was Professor Srinivasan, who was also the head of the institute. Once, the students were placed in teams of four students each, and our team had to design a low-level attack aircraft. He was in charge of coming up with the aerodynamic design. They worked very hard for weeks. His teammates were designing all the other components, like the propulsion, structure, control and instrumentation. Since his other course work was over at the time, he and his teammates spent long hours discussing our ideas and researching them. They were all keen to impress their professors with their project. They kept an eye on the progress and after a few days, Professor Srinivasan asked to see the design he had created. When he showed it to him, he examined it with his characteristic critical eye. Dr Kalam stood by, waiting with bated breath to hear his verdict. The teacher looked at the paper spread out in front of him, then he straightened up and his next words stunned him. “This is just not good enough, Kalam,” he said. He turned stern eyes on Kalam and continued, “I expected much better from you. This is dismal work and I am disappointed that someone with your talent has come up with work like this.” He stared at the professor, dumbfounded. Kalam had always been the star pupil in any class and had never ever been pulled up by a teacher for anything. This feeling of embarrassment and shame was a new experience for him, and he did not like it one bit. The professor shook his head some more and told him that he had to redo the entire design, starting from scratch and rethinking all his assumptions. Kalam agreed shamefacedly. Then his teacher broke the next bad news. Not only was he supposed to do the work again, he had to finish it in three days! “Today is Friday afternoon, young man. I want to see a flawless configuration drawing by Monday evening. If you are unable to do so, your scholarship will be stopped.” He was even more dumbfounded now. The scholarship was the only way he could afford to be in college. Without it, Kalam would have to stop my studies. His own ambitions, the dreams of his parents, his sister and Jalalluddin dashed before his eyes and seemed to recede to a distance. It was unthinkable that the future could turn so bleak with a few words spoken by his professor. He got to work right away, determined to prove himself. He skipped dinner and remained at the drawing board through the night. Where earlier the components of his design were floating in his head, now they suddenly came together and took on forms and shapes he could work with. The concentrated work he put in seemed to brush away all the cobwebs of the mind. By the next morning, he was working like a man possessed. He took a short break to eat and freshen up, and went back to work again. By Sunday evening, his work was nearly complete an elegant, neat design that he was proud of. While he was putting final touches to it, he sensed a presence in the room. It was the professor, still dressed in his tennis whites, on his way back from the club. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there, watching me. Now, as their eyes met, he came forward. He looked critically at Kalam's work for many minutes. Then he straightened up and smiled. To Kalam's amazement, he hugged him affectionately. Then patting him on the back, he said, “I knew I was putting you under immense pressure when I rejected your work the other day. I set an impossible deadline—yet you have met it with work that I can only call outstanding. As your teacher, I had to push you to your limits so that you could recognise your own true potential.” After two days of extreme dejection, those words were music to his ears and revived his confidence and self-belief.

That day Kalam learnt two lessons: a teacher who has his or her student’s progress in mind is the best possible friend, because the teacher knows how to make sure that you excel. And second, there is no such thing as an impossible deadline. I have worked on many tough assignments, some of which had the country’s top leaders watching over my work, but the assurance I gained in my capabilities at MIT thanks to Professor Srinivasan helped me later in life too. Kalam's attitude regarding "impossible deadlines" and the ability to challenge himself and rise from failure were instilled in him at a very young age by his father. Living in a village by the coast side his father used to ferry pilgrims and that boat was a huge source of income for their family but one night a storm wrecked that boat but his father never gave up. Kalam then started selling newspapers along with his brother Samsuddin and collecting seeds which had come into demand for some reason at the outbreak of the 2nd world war. This taught himself reliance and is an example of how enterprising he had been even in his childhood.

Freedom is the "strength within" that propels us to do more, live more and contribute more. It’s not about what controls us, it’s about what we destined to achieve beyond the controls.

Happy Independence Day, Jai Hind
- DC*