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Wings of Fire Page issues This article is about the autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam. For other uses, see Wings of Fire (disambiguation). Wings of Fire: An Autobiography of APJ Abdul Kalam (1999), former President of India. It was written by Dr. Kalam and Arun Tiwari.[1] Kalam examines his early life, effort, hardship, fortitude, luck and chance that eventually led him to lead Indian space research, nuclear and missile programs. Kalam started his career, after graduating from Aerospace engineering at MIT (Chennai), India, at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and was assigned to build a hovercraft prototype. Later he moved to ISRO and helped establish the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and pioneered the first space launch-vehicle program. During the 1990s and early 2000, Kalam moved to the DRDO to lead the Indian nuclear weapons program, with particular successes in thermonuclear weapons development culminating in the operation Smiling Buddha and an ICBM Agni (missile). Kalam died on 27 July 2015, during a speech at Indian Institute of Management in Shillong, Meghalaya.

Wings of fire

Book cover for A P J Abdul Kalam's Wings of Fire. Author	A P J Abdul Kalam Cover artist	Photograph courtesy: The Week Subject	India journey to self-reliance in technology Genre	Autobiography Publisher	Universities Press Publication date 1999 Media type	Print (Paperback) Pages	180 (paperback edition) ISBN	81-7371-146-1 (paperback edition) OCLC	41326410 LC Class	Q143.A197 A3 1999 Translations	Edit

The autobiography first published in English, has so far been translated and published in 13 languages including Hindi, English, Tamil, Malayalam, Oriya, Marathi, and Gujarati. Outside of the major Indian languages, Wings of Fire was translated into Chinese (titled Huo Yi, by Ji Peng), and translated into French.[2]

Structure	Edit

Wings of Fire unfolds the story of Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam from his childhood in the following seven sections:

Preface Acknowledgments Introductions Orientation Creation Propitiation Contemplation Epilogue Orientation	Edit

Kalam was born in 1931, the son of a little-educated boat owner in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. His father was also the imam of the small mosque in Rameswaram. He had an unparallel career as a defense scientist, culminating the highest civilian award of India, Bharat Ratna. As a chief of the country's defence research and development programmer, Kalam demonstrated a great potential for dynamics and innovations that existed in seemingly moribund research establishment. This is the story of Kalam's own rise from obscurity and his personal and professional struggles, as well as the story of AGNI, TRISHUL and NAG missiles that have become household names in India and that have raised the nation to the level of a missile power of international reckoning. Since independence, India has sought in various ways, to self-realization, and fortunately, also to adulation and success. The book begins with the childhood of Kalam's life. In the beginning, he introduces us to his family and tries to familiarize us with his birthplace Rameswaram. In the childhood he was a great admirer of his father, Jainulabdeen. He was a man of great wisdom and kindness, and Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, a close friend of his father and the head priest of the Rameswaram Temple. He had an ideal helpmate in his mother, Ashiamma. He was also influenced by his close friend, Ahmed Jallaluddin; he was about 15 years older than Kalam. With his friend, he talked about spiritual matters. This shows that he believed in spirituality and also believed in God and Khudah. He always went to Lord Shiva's temple with his friends. The later part of the opening chapters, he introduces his cousin Samsuddin, his school teachers and all the people who were felt any difference amongst them. Here he expresses one event, which happened in his school days, "Rameswaram Sastry, a new teacher of his school he could not stomach a Hindu Priest's son sitting with a Muslim boy. In accordan