President A P J Abdul Kalam on Friday won many young hearts during an interaction with school children in Rudahi village in Bakshi-ka-Talab, a suburb in Lucknow.
Doing away with all security norms, he asked school children to get seated in the security `D' so that he could communicate with them without any barriers in between.
The President took everyone by surprise when he addressed the audience in Hindi, a language in which he is not known to be conversant.
When an inquisitive Komal Singh, a class VIII student, asked the missile man whether it was possible to make a missile that could promote world peace, pat came the reply, "India has produced the greatest missile - Ahimsa Dharma (the principle of non-violence)."
The student had come from the government upper primary school in Ram Chaura village, some 40 km away from Lucknow, where the President was earlier scheduled to visit.
Kalam was in Uttar Pradesh on a day's visit to attend the centenary celebrations of King George's Medical College. The centenary coincided with the college's first convocation since its elevation as a medical university.
The President also attended the annual convocation of the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow.
However, most of his time during the visit was spent doing what he loves most interacting with school children.
Kalam was at ease during the whole interaction. He showed no discomfiture when Varsha, a class VIII student of Lawrence Balika Inter College in the neighbourhood, pointedly asked him if the office of the Indian President would continue to function like a rubber-stamp. Without a blink, he replied, "Well, the President is also meant to bring smiles to the people of the country by paving the path to build a prosperous and developed India; and I am working in that direction."
Next, Vaishali, another class VIII student from a different school, asked the President, "Do you ever think about the life of children coming from poor families?"
Kalam, in reply, said, "I am aware of the fact that more than 260 million people in this country still live below the poverty line. But under the new policy, the government has made free education for all children between 5 and 14 years compulsory; and that is bound to help poor children."
When 12-year-old Amita wanted to know if, in his childhood, he had ever dreamt of becoming India's President, Kalam replied, "When I was 10 years old, my teacher in the local school in my native village taught me how birds flew, and that was the first time I got interested in the concept of flying. Perhaps, that is what inspired me to learn how to fly missiles too."
Earlier, the President called upon the 300-odd children present in the gathering to take an eight-point oath. He asked the children to make a resolve that they will fight illiteracy and pollution and will have a small family.
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