It was way back in 2001 - i was in my final year of engineering and we had our department symposium "prodigy" scheduled in the month of February 02. It was the final year's responsibilty to conduct the event. we all debated as to who should be the chief guest for the event - we finally decided that it would be a great honour to have Dr.Abdul kalam preside over the event. At that point of time, he had retired from DRDO and he was a faculty at Anna university. So Jaggu and i took the responsibilty of going doen to Chennai to invite him for the symposium.
Little did we know at that point of time about the formality of fixing up an appointment before visiting - Jaggu and i landed up in Anna university and we directly went to his office. We managed to speak our way past the security and met his secretary. Dr.Kalam was not there in the office and we were asked to come back in the afternoon. When we returned in the afternoon, his secretary was not sure if we could meet him that day (we were to return back to trichy that night). We guys had almost given up all hope and were about to leave. All of a sudden, Dr.Abdul Kalam steps out of his room to say something to the secretary and he notices us sitting there. He asked the secretary as to who we were and as soon as he knew we were students from REC, he came down to us and spoke to us. He was a man down to earth and he listened to us patiently. He politely declined to preside over the function - we did not achieve our goal of getting him to REC but we were happy that we were able to shake hands with the undisputed leader of the indian misslie program who breather life into Agni And Prithvi :)
This is one memorable meeting which i would carry to my grave
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