<div>Two days before his death, former President A P J Abdul Kalam told his “universal friend” Y S Rajan that he would come to his Bengaluru home around August-September to share a meal cooked by Rajan’s wife, with whom he often exchanged notes on recipes.<br /><br />“The last time I spoke to him was on Saturday. A day before, he met my two sons and grandchildren in Delhi. He spoke to my wife first and told her that he would come sometime in August or September to have lunch or dinner with us,” Rajan, who had 50 years of association with the “Missile Man”, told Deccan Herald.<br /><br />Rajan met Kalam way back in 1965 at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, where Rajan used to work in Vikram Sarabhai's team. Though Kalam was an engineer, he frequented PRL to discuss rocketry with space scientists as he was preparing to operationalise SLV-3, the first indigenous satellite launch vehicle that lifted off from Sriharikota successfully on July 18, 1980, after several failures.<br /><br />Notwithstanding 12 years gap between their age, the association grew over the years. “We had commonality on Tamil language and shared loves for the works of Thiruvalluvar and Subramania Bharati. I shared many poems with him,” he said. Later Rajan became Isro’s scientific secretary and helped resolve several internal conflicts, which Kalam had with his colleagues and seniors. Kalam recognised Rajan's role in conflict resolution.<br /><br />“Rajan was (and is) a universal friend. His close intervention with different work centres created such a harmony in SLV affairs that the fine threads of individual efforts were woven into a mighty fabric of great strength,” Kalam wrote in his autobiography “Wings of Fire”.<br /><br />After the space department, Rajan moved to a new unit created by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) called Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) in Delhi as its executive director. <br /><br />Kalam, too, was associated with TIFAC as its chairman. The Vision-2020 document, which Kalam quoted so often in his speeches, came from the TIFAC. It was documented in 25 volumes and released in 1996. A couple of years later, it was turned into a book by Rajan and Kalam.<br /><br />“Vision-2020 was Kalam's idea, which was implemented by Rajan. Even today, we don't have a document like that which tells us what small steps we need to take on the technology front, keeping the big picture in mind,” recounted V S Ramamurthy, former DST secretary, who now heads the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.</div>
<div>Two days before his death, former President A P J Abdul Kalam told his “universal friend” Y S Rajan that he would come to his Bengaluru home around August-September to share a meal cooked by Rajan’s wife, with whom he often exchanged notes on recipes.<br /><br />“The last time I spoke to him was on Saturday. A day before, he met my two sons and grandchildren in Delhi. He spoke to my wife first and told her that he would come sometime in August or September to have lunch or dinner with us,” Rajan, who had 50 years of association with the “Missile Man”, told Deccan Herald.<br /><br />Rajan met Kalam way back in 1965 at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, where Rajan used to work in Vikram Sarabhai's team. Though Kalam was an engineer, he frequented PRL to discuss rocketry with space scientists as he was preparing to operationalise SLV-3, the first indigenous satellite launch vehicle that lifted off from Sriharikota successfully on July 18, 1980, after several failures.<br /><br />Notwithstanding 12 years gap between their age, the association grew over the years. “We had commonality on Tamil language and shared loves for the works of Thiruvalluvar and Subramania Bharati. I shared many poems with him,” he said. Later Rajan became Isro’s scientific secretary and helped resolve several internal conflicts, which Kalam had with his colleagues and seniors. Kalam recognised Rajan's role in conflict resolution.<br /><br />“Rajan was (and is) a universal friend. His close intervention with different work centres created such a harmony in SLV affairs that the fine threads of individual efforts were woven into a mighty fabric of great strength,” Kalam wrote in his autobiography “Wings of Fire”.<br /><br />After the space department, Rajan moved to a new unit created by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) called Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) in Delhi as its executive director. <br /><br />Kalam, too, was associated with TIFAC as its chairman. The Vision-2020 document, which Kalam quoted so often in his speeches, came from the TIFAC. It was documented in 25 volumes and released in 1996. A couple of years later, it was turned into a book by Rajan and Kalam.<br /><br />“Vision-2020 was Kalam's idea, which was implemented by Rajan. Even today, we don't have a document like that which tells us what small steps we need to take on the technology front, keeping the big picture in mind,” recounted V S Ramamurthy, former DST secretary, who now heads the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.</div>
