Literature Chapter 6 - My Childhood

The Class 9 English Beehive Chapter 6, ‘My Childhood’, is an excerpt taken from the autobiography of the great scientist and 14th President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. The autobiography was titled “Wings of Fire”. This chapter describes his childhood life.

Synopsis

Dr. Kalam was born in a middle-class Muslim family in the year 1931, in the island town of Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu (then known as Madras). His parents were Jainulabdeen and Ashiamma. He had many siblings and was reportedly short, with no distinguishing features appearance-wise compared to his parents, who were both tall and handsome.
Kalam’s parents, friends, and teachers greatly influenced him. His father, though not highly educated or rich, possessed great wisdom and was a generous man. He did not spend much on unnecessary luxurious items but ensured that all the necessities were provided for his family. Dr. Kalam said that he was grateful to his parents for providing a secure and memorable childhood. While he inherited the principles of honesty and self-discipline from his father, it was her mother Ashiamma who instilled the qualities of goodness and kindness in him. She was generous in nature and fed many outsiders each day, more than the total number of family members put together. They lived in a fairly large ancestral house, built in the middle 19th century and located on Mosque Street of Rameswaram.

The Second World War did not affect the isolated town of Rameswaram too much. But it was during this time that the young Dr. Kalam earned his first salary by assisting his cousin Samsuddin in the distribution of newspapers, in Rameswaram. Due to reasons unknown to him, the price of Tamarind seeds had risen up during the war. He used to collect the seeds and sell them to a provision shop on Mosque Street and was quite content with earning the wages of an ‘anna’ a day.

Kalam had three close friends during his childhood. Aravindam, Ramanadha Sastry and Sivaprakashan. Ramanadha Sastry wept when a new teacher had asked Dr. Kalam not to sit in the front row along with the higher caste Brahmin boys. This proves that even though the teacher was guilty of religious and caste discrimination, the young students were not.

This was also one isolated incident as the entire town lived in religious harmony for most of the time. The teacher was later forced to apologize and mend his ways by Lakshmana Sastry, Ramanadha’s father and high priest of the temple- who asked him not to spread the seeds of communal hatred in young, innocent minds. Later, this incident had a profound impact on Dr. Kalam’s life.

There was another person of influence in Dr. Kalam’s life- Sivasubramania Iyer. The science teacher instilled in young Kalam the important lesson of breaking social barriers. Though an orthodox Brahmin with a religious wife at home, he was rebellious in nature and wanted to break the social barriers so that people from different communities could mingle. He had once invited Kalam for a meal at his house. The horrified wife refused to serve a Muslim in her pure veg kitchen to which Iyer responded by serving the young Kalam with his own hands and eating along with him. He had further invited Kalam for dinner the next weekend and upon observing young Kalam’s hesitation, the teacher mentioned that to change the norms of the society, young Kalam had to be brave and confront such problems. The conservative attitude of Iyer’s wife also changed, and she served food to Abdul in the kitchen with her own hands when he visited the next week.

When Abdul Kalam sought his father’s permission for leaving Rameswaram for higher education and study at the district headquarters at Ramanathapuram- his father said that Abdul had to go a long way in life like a seagull bird(a sea bird which travels long distances for gathering food). He had calmed the hesitant mother by reciting a poem by Khalil Gibran- which mentioned that the parents could love and care for the children. However, they must also allow the children to develop and grow their own thoughts. They did not belong to her but were a result of life’s desire for itself.

We at UrbanPro are dedicated to helping the students better themselves. Detailed summary and answers to textbook questions are available at the NCERT Solutions for Class 9 English Beehive Chapter 6, which can be downloaded as a pdf version for offline reading. Please click the link: My Childhood Class 9 PDF.