Erode Police officer’s ode to People’s President shines in Rameswaram

The poem written by IPS officer R Sivakumar, Superintendent of Police, Erode, under the title, ‘Bharat Ratna Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Worshipful Indian Hero’ in July 2015, has travelled a long way from being a piece of paper to finding a permanent place in Rameswaram, the birthplace of  Kalam. The poem, inscribed on two granite slabs in English and Tamil, was donated to the Number 1 Mandapam Union Primary School, where the late President did his early schooling. 

“The school is visited by thousands of people from across the country in memory of  Kalam. On completion of the Kalam memorial, the granite slabs will be shifted to it so that people will understand the greatness of the man in a nutshell,” says Shanmuga Gandhi (82), founder of Jaisathiyam Trust in Erode, who initiated the effort to inscribe the poem on granite. Dr Sivakumar, a police officer since 2001, recalled that the first time he met Kalam was when the latter came to Gandhigram Rural Insitute (GRI)  in Dindigul in 2010. “I was the Additional Superintendent of Police at that time,” he told DTNext . Sivakumar was the Deputy Commissioner for the Control Room in Chennai when Kalam passed away on July 27, 2015. 

“I was monitoring VIP visits to the state and was glued to the television watching the crowd thronging Rameswaram. Though I have read his books and heard a lot about him, I got to know more about the icon through the news and television programmes. It was then that I wrote the poem and did my best to highlight his qualities in 60 lines in Tamil,” he said. 

He first published the poem on social media. It was later published in a few Tamil magazines. On October 15, 2015, the birth anniversary of the former President, music composer Shankar Ganesh composed a song using lyrics from the poem. Sivakumar’s friends made 25,000 pamphlets containing the poem and circulated it in educational institutions. 

On October 15, 2016, the poem was translated into English by E Samson, the Superintendent of Tiruvallur District. By that time, Sivakumar was posted as the SP of Erode. Shanmuga Gandhi came across one of the pamphlets in a college in Erode. “I have a very personnel association with the Kalam family, I presented the poem to his grandson APJMJ Sheikh Salim who readily showed interest in displaying the poem at a prominent place. In December work began to inscribe it on two granite slabs, each measuring five feet in height and 2.5 feet in breadth at Chithode in Erode,” Shanmuga Gandhi said.