Kalam: Joy of Reading

The books he names

The essay's centre is a short list of the books that shaped him, and a student should be able to name them and say what each gave him.

The one with a story attached is Light from Many Lamps. Kalam describes finding it in 1953 in a second-hand bookshop in Madras, and reading and rereading it so often that the copy had to be bound and rebound to hold together. It is a collection of inspirational passages with commentary, and he says it brought him solace in hours of sadness and balance when his own emotions threatened to carry him away. A question asking about "the various books" wants that detail, because it shows you have read the essay rather than a list.

The Thirukkural is the one to be able to say something about, because it is the Indian text in the list and the one an Indian examiner is most likely to ask about. It is a Tamil classic of 1,330 couplets, traditionally attributed to the poet Thiruvalluvar, arranged in three parts on virtue, on wealth or polity, and on love. Kalam quoted it constantly in his speeches.

The home library proposal

What he asks for. That every family keep books at home, so that children see reading as an ordinary domestic activity rather than a school exercise.

The reasoning. A child who grows up in a house with books becomes a reader without being made to. The habit is formed by the environment rather than by instruction, which is why the proposal is about furniture and not about schooling.

The oath, which is the part to quote. Kalam did not leave the proposal general. He asked audiences to take an oath in three generations: that they would start a home library of twenty books, of which ten would be children's books; that their sons and daughters would enlarge it to two hundred; and that their grandchildren would build a library of two thousand. The library, he said, becomes a lifelong treasure and the precious property of the family.

And the detail that proves he meant it literally. He administered the oath at book fairs, and the reported effect was that the audience went straight to the stalls and cleared most of the books within the hour.

Why it is characteristic of him. Kalam's public life was full of proposals of this shape: small, concrete, addressed to families and children rather than to governments, and expressed as something anybody could begin doing that evening.

The two stories the essay tells

The essay does not argue in the abstract. It proves its claim twice, with two people, and MU examines both by name.

V. Kathiresan, the driver who became a professor

The facts, which are on the public record. V. Kathiresan joined Kalam as his driver in January 1982 at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory at Hyderabad, where Kalam was then director, and worked with him for about nine years. Kalam noticed that in every free hour the man was reading: newspapers, magazines, whatever came to hand. He had failed English in his tenth standard examination.

What Kalam did. He urged him to continue his studies, arranged for him to rewrite the paper he had failed, helped him with his English, bought him books and paid his fees.

What Kathiresan then did, which is the point of the story. He cleared the tenth standard in 1982, then the twelfth with history, then a bachelor's degree and a master's in history by correspondence, then a bachelor's and a master's in education, and in 2002 a doctorate in history from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, on the zamindari system in the Tirunelveli district. He became a teacher of history in a government college and now guides research scholars of his own.

The meeting that produced the story. In January 2011 Kalam went to Madurai to inaugurate a paediatric oncology unit at a hospital there. A man came up to him afterwards whose face he half recognised, and it was Kathiresan, by then a doctor of philosophy. It is that meeting the essay recounts.

What the story is doing in an essay about reading. It is the strongest form of Kalam's claim. Reading in the free hours of a working life, with no institution behind it and no examination in view, changed what the man was able to become. A student writing on this should end there rather than on the qualifications, because the qualifications are the evidence and the habit is the argument.

Steven, the boy who was not expected to speak

Note. Give the outline and do not invent detail. What follows is the course of the story as published accounts of the essay describe it.

The situation. A boy named Steven suffered a brain injury, and the family was told that he would not speak. They refused to accept it and set out to teach him anyway, working at it daily.

What the family did. They read to him constantly, and the reading was done in his presence rather than at him, so that books and voices became the ordinary furniture of the room. His mother and sister played the piano where he could hear it. They exercised the muscles he would need, in ways as homely as dabbing peanut butter on his lips so that licking it off worked his tongue and jaw.

The turning point. After about three months, Steven moved of his own accord towards the children's books and turned the pages until he came to one filled with pictures of animals. On a later night he crawled to the same book and opened it at the same page, which showed that he was remembering. In time he began to make new sounds, humming the music he had been hearing.

What Kalam takes from it. That the capacity to learn is not settled by a prognosis, and that books, offered patiently and long before there is any sign of a result, are what reach a mind nobody else can reach. It is the same claim as the Kathiresan story made at the other end of a life.

How to answer it for thirteen marks. Place the story in the essay, give the situation, give what the family did in three specific things, give the turning point with the detail of the same page opened twice, and then say what the story proves and why Kalam chose it. Close by connecting it to the home library proposal, since both say that the presence of books in a room does the work.

How MU examines this essay

This is the practical part of the chapter, and it is unusual.

It is examined in two ways, and both appear regularly.

The first is a question about your own reading. In February 2026 the paper set, worth thirteen marks, "Write a review of a book that has been source of inspiration to you", and in January 2025 the same idea appeared as "Books can be sources of inspiration, writes Dr Kalam. In about 300 words, write a review of a book which has been a source of inspiration to you." That is the essay's method turned back on the candidate, and the book review chapter that follows is the preparation for it.

The second is a direct question, and it comes in four forms.

A quotation from the essay has also been set for reference to context, on 22 April 2024: "Another book that I have cherished is Man the Unknown by Dr Alexis Carrel, a doctor turned philosopher and a Nobel Laureate", with the follow-up asking the central theme of that book, which is that body and mind must be treated together because the human being is a whole. On 11 May 2026 the Kathiresan passage was set the same way, asking who is addressed and by whom.

What follows for revision. This essay is examined more often and at greater length than its two pages suggest. Learn the four books, the two stories and the oath, and you have covered every question the University has asked on it.

Themes worth naming

Reading as self-education. Kalam is largely describing what books did for him outside a classroom, which is why the essay appeals to students who feel that their real education is their own responsibility.

The ordinary origin. He came from a small town and a family without money, and his account of reading is the account of a person for whom books were the available road. That is the part Indian students find nearest to themselves.

Books and character. The claim is not that reading makes you clever but that it makes you a particular kind of person, which is why the three books he names are about conduct and human capacity rather than about engineering.

Continuity with the rest of Module 2. Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living; Kalam says the unread life is a poorer one. Both are claims that a person has a duty to their own mind, and an essay may connect them.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a short note on Kalam's Joy of Reading." Six marks, roughly a page.

A model answer. Joy of Reading is an essay by Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, aerospace scientist and President of India, collected in The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: The Righteous Life. Its argument is that books are lifelong companions rather than instruments of study, and that a person can be formed by particular books at particular moments. Kalam proves the claim from his own life rather than in the abstract, naming the works that shaped him: Lillian Eichler Watson's Light from Many Lamps, Thiruvalluvar's Thirukkural, the Tamil classic of couplets on virtue, wealth and love, and Alexis Carrel's Man the Unknown. From reading he traces a chain to imagination, from imagination to creativity, and from creativity to what a country becomes, which is why the essay reads as practical rather than literary. It ends in a proposal that is characteristically small and concrete: that every family should keep a library at home, so that children grow up among books and acquire the habit from their surroundings rather than from instruction. The essay's place on this syllabus is easy to justify, since every skill the course tests, from reference to context to precis to critical analysis, depends on the habit it recommends.

Why this scores. It places the author and the source, states the argument in stages, names the three books with a word about the Indian one, gives the proposal, and ends with a judgment rather than a summary.

Quick revision

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, 1931 to 2015, aerospace scientist, President of India 2002 to 2007, born at Rameswaram.

The essay is in The Very Best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: The Righteous Life.

Four propositions: books are companions; particular books make particular people; reading produces imagination and imagination everything else; therefore build a home library.

The books: Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler Watson, found in a second-hand shop in Madras in 1953 and rebound from rereading; the Thirukkural of Thiruvalluvar, 1,330 Tamil couplets in three parts on virtue, wealth and love; Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel, a doctor turned philosopher and Nobel laureate; and the Holy Quran, a constant companion.

The oath: twenty books at home of which ten are children's books, two hundred in the next generation, two thousand in the one after.

The two stories: V. Kathiresan, the driver at Hyderabad who read in his free hours and became a doctor of history; and Steven, the boy who was not expected to speak and who was read to until he began to remember and to sound.

MU examines this essay both through the book review and directly, by name, on the two stories, the books and the home library.

Test yourself

1. Who was Kalam, and when did he live? Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, 1931 to 2015, an aerospace scientist who worked at ISRO and DRDO and was President of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and died while lecturing to students at Shillong.

2. State the argument of the essay in four steps. That books are companions for life rather than tools for examinations; that particular books form particular people, which he proves from his own reading; that reading produces imagination and imagination produces creativity and national development; and that therefore every family should keep a library at home.

3. Name the three books he identifies and say what the Indian one is. Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler Watson, the Thirukkural of Thiruvalluvar, and Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel. The Thirukkural is a Tamil classic of 1,330 couplets arranged in three parts, on virtue, on wealth or polity, and on love.

4. What is the home library proposal, and why is it typical of Kalam? That every household should keep books, so that children grow up among them and take up reading from their surroundings rather than from instruction. It is typical because his proposals were characteristically small, concrete, addressed to families and children, and capable of being started at once.

5. Who was V. Kathiresan, and why is he in an essay about reading? Kalam's driver at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory at Hyderabad from 1982, who read in every free hour and had failed English in the tenth standard. Kalam had him rewrite that paper, helped him with English, bought him books and paid his fees, and Kathiresan went on to a master's degree, a doctorate in history in 2002 and a college teaching post. He is in the essay because he is the claim proved: reading done in the spare hours of a working life changed what the man could become.

6. Give the outline of the story of Steven. A boy who suffered a brain injury and was not expected to speak. His family refused the prognosis, read to him constantly, played the piano in his hearing and exercised the muscles he would need, using such homely means as peanut butter on his lips to make him work his tongue. After about three months he moved by himself to the children's books and stopped at a page of animal pictures, and later returned to the same page, which showed that he remembered; in time he began to hum. Kalam uses it to show that books reach a mind before anything else does.

7. How is this essay usually examined? Not by a direct question but through the skill it recommends. The February 2026 paper set an essay of thirteen marks asking the candidate to write a review of a book that had been a source of inspiration, which is the same task Kalam performs for his own three books.