On what would have been his 95th birth anniversary, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam — scientist, dreamer, and the 11th President of India — is being remembered across the nation with the same reverence that defined his extraordinary life. Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri paid tribute on Thursday, October 15, reaching back into his own career to share two rare personal encounters with the man the country called its 'Missile Man'.

Puri wrote that Dr Kalam 'embodied the idea of India — its diversity, aspirations and boundless possibilities,' describing him as 'a scientist of extraordinary vision and a President who touched hearts, and inspired generations.' The tribute carried a personal weight uncommon in routine anniversary posts: Puri worked alongside Kalam directly — first in South Block, then on the diplomatic circuit in Europe.

Two meetings across two decades: from South Block to Geneva

The first encounter was institutional. When Dr Kalam served as Scientific Adviser to the Raksha Mantri — a role he took up in 1992, also heading the DRDO — Puri was posted as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Defence. Working closely with Kalam inside the ministry gave Puri a ringside view of the scientist-administrator who was then architecting India's missile and strategic programmes.

The second meeting came a decade later, on a very different stage. In 2005, with Kalam now President of India (he served from 2002 to 2007), Puri — by then India's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva — had the honour of receiving him on an official visit. The image of a career diplomat welcoming a former missile scientist turned head of state captures something essential about Kalam's arc: the man moved through every room of the Indian Republic.

The legacy that makes October 15 a national moment

Dr Kalam was born on October 15, 1931, in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu. His journey from a modest family in a small temple town to leading India's Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) — the programme that produced Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul and Nag — became the most-told story of meritocracy in independent India. The Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, was conferred on him in 1997.

His presidency from Rashtrapati Bhavan (2002–2007) was defined by his accessibility to students and his relentless message to India's youth: dream large, work harder. He passed away on July 27, 2015, mid-sentence during a lecture at IIM Shillong — the kind of exit that felt scripted by myth. Every October 15 since, India pauses to take the measure of what he left behind.

Puri's post is a reminder that Kalam's influence ran not only through laboratories and classrooms but through the corridors of the defence establishment and the floors of international diplomatic missions — threading together India's strategic, scientific, and foreign-policy worlds in a single life.