The Luminous Sparks is an exquisite book of poems and biographical
thoughts of one of the greatest living scientist
philosophers of India
Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, the President of India.
He not only writes his poems but takes the reader to the window of his
mind and reveals the reasons for writing the poem, which is very rare.
His mind comes out like a transparent sheen of waterfall through which
you can see his poems and his
thoughts dazzling in rainbow colours
without embellishments, going straight to your heart.
The very first poem Harmony
takes us to the classroom of two small kids who are seperated because
one reads Kuran and other reads Gita. They have no difference in their
mind, beyond any conditioning, these two children react to each other
just as two humanbeings but those with minds heavy with conditioning of
seperatism cannot tolerate that and try to seperate them. Dr Kalam
wants you to break the goggles of perception that seperate us. If we
all start feeling as one,and free our minds of prejudices we will be
able to 'kill the snake' that leads to shedding the blood of innocent
in the name of religion, class, caste or creed.
More than once in his poems such as Pursuit of
Happiness and Whispers of Jasmine,
presented as poetic dramas, Dr Kalam urges on people to do their duty
without looking for rewards.To think that it is my duty to work, My
religion, my worship is my work irrespective of rewards. A flower
blooms whether you look at it or not. It gives fragrance and happiness
and softens the harsh human emotions irrespective of your trampling on
its buds. Learn from flowers, learn from nature the poet urges.
Another thought that emerges in these poems is, what kind of leaders
this world needs. The poet answers this question in his thoughts The Real Leader.
Real leader according to him is not the one who worries about his
interests, visibility and chair. Rather the real leader walks along
with suffering millions trying to mitigate their sorrows like Mahatma
Gandhi. Such a leader has a yearning to spread happiness for all.
The poems are most aesthetically presented with paintings created as the publisher says specially for these poems.
This is a new genre of book production with colourful and highly visual
presentation of paintings representing the thoughts in the poems.
Thus the book creates a category of its own - a visual poetry book. It
is printed in full colour on art paper with excellent production
quality.
The book will be liked by all generations for its different values,
specially by those who feel the scorches of seperatism, unending human
greed and yet have an ultimate faith in human goodness with the message
that the eternal happiness comes through giving.
This is a book that you will like to possess and pass on to next generation as well.