Dr Kalam delivers another bestseller
APJ Abdul Kalam is one of few writers of inspirational books have a huge following
Kalam, a former president of India, made his name as the man who drove India's ballistic missile program, spearheaded India's nuclear tests in 1998, helped design a coronary stent,then a tablet PC meant to help health-care workers. But the odd mixture of never-say-die attitude helped him become a role model for many Indians.
Which is why Rajpal Publishing, when it had trouble choosing a title for his latest work, could turn to a huge pool of potential readers, thousands of whom responded and picked Forge Your Future.
These fans were well aware of Kalam's humble beginnings and rise to fame, says Samir Khandwala, founder of iMusti, which is distributing the book in the US – in both paper and ebook form.
Rajpal, which has a strong stable of writers with backgrounds in Indian literature – such as Harivanshrai Bachchan, Munshi Prem Chand and Khushwant Singh – and national stalwarts such as V Radhakrishnan, a scholar who was India's second president; Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Narasimha Rao and Inder Singh Gujral, all former Indian prime minister.
It has also published Abode of Truth, by Narendra Modi, India's current prime minister.
Khandwala's US-based iMusti wanted an alliance with India's leading publishers, and there were few that could compare with Rajpal.
“The intent was to bring India's top quality content (over),” says Khandwala. I met Pranav (Johri, marketing director at Rajpal and Sons) and our vision matches.” The result has been the first set of ebooks in Indian languages.
With this, Kalam's latest and arguably his best effort, the patnership aims to bring the best of a resurgent India's ideas to an audience not limited to the subcontinent.
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Source: indiaabroad-digital.com / Nov 14, 2014
"Despite the fact that I spent my childhood in Rameswaram, an isolated island in the south of India, I could get educated, find a job and overcome many obstacles to become the President of my country. If I could overcome all the hardships and achieve what I have, so can you or anyone else. It does not matter where you start from or what you have achieved till date, the important thing is that from this point onwards, you decide what you want and work towards creating your own future. This is the message I want to convey through this book and if it can inspire even one young person to achieve his or her dream, I will feel that my effort has been truly worth it. In the last fifteen years I have interacted with more than 16 million youth, in face-to face meetings, through emails and over Face- book, and wherever I go I am asked questions. Everyday I receive about 300 emails and spend two hours reading and answering them. This book is based on the questions that I have been asked over the years. In their questions, people are mostly seeking solutions to problems that they are facing in their lives. Answering these questions, I realized that what we call problems may probably be a result of the way we 'process' events and sit- uations in our lives and everything that happens in our world. 'Process' means the way we perceive and think about them. If we could change the way we 'process', then we could possibly change the way we think about our problems and hence also about their solutions. I believe it is possible to do so and that is the underlying theme in my answers. My answers are based on what I have learnt from my own experiences of life, and from reading books and my interactions with political and spiritual leaders. The replies in my book are presented in a way that they provide a generic message for any one who may be undergoing a similar problem in his or her life.
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