I picked up this book to read on a flight and finished it in one sitting (including the taxi to the venue at my destination). This is a book about our previous Indian president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam written by his personal secretary Mr. PM Nair.

The book is a light read filled with many incidents that show many facets of our most popular president so far. Dr. Kalam - a rocket scientist, no less - was a completely apolitical appointee to the President's post and has probably envisioned and done more for India than any of the crop of politicians we have or seem to have in the horizon.

Anecdotes about his meeting with the President of Pakistan and George and Laura Bush make interesting reading. He was a tech-savvy person who did not care about protocol when it came to his passion about India, honesty and knowledge. The book has many photos of the President in ways you couldn't think of - sitting on the floor of the stage at a panel discussion on journalism, playing the drums with Sivamani, flying a fighter aircraft (he's over 70!) and more.

Although the book does highlight him as the President we all loved and looked up to, it is fair in also showing him to be human - with human failings. One of the things that Dr. Kalam had a major problem with was time - he was extremely unpunctual and would make up meetings at odd hours of the day without giving a thought about the infrastructure requirements that the President of India needed when visiting places. I guess as a geek himself, he was used to working odd hours of the day!

This is a great book to pick up and read about Dr. Kalam. Many small things in the book reinforce the fact that after a very long time we actually had a visionary leading the country - albeit for a very short time. It is surely a pity that our country's politicians did not heed the pleas of the citizens to make him the President for at least one more term.