India's "missile man", Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who began life as a newspaper boy, has been sworn in as the country's 12th president at a resplendent ceremony in parliament's central hall.
The 71-year-old Muslim defence scientist with shoulder length hair has been closely associated with India's missile and nuclear programmes. He has set elimination of poverty and unemployment as one of his priorities. He succeeds Mr Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who completed his five-year term in the largely ceremonial post but one that has played a crucial role in forming coalition governments over the past decade.
Mr Kalam who is a bachelor, a vegetarian and an amateur musician is also a poet. He can recite with equal ease from the Koran and the Hindu scripture Bhagavadgita. Around 700 MPs from both the upper and lower houses of parliament, diplomats, industrialists and schoolchildren attended the function. The schoolchildren were invited to the function at the specific request of Kalam, who has set himself a goal of bringing 100,000 young Indians into the scientific community by 2020.
Meanwhile, Mr Kalam's grey locks are titillating the country that is unused to seeing their First Citizen sporting a trendy, albeit unkempt, rock-star type of hair style. The new president has caused further consternation by reportedly telling senior MP's that he plans on getting his carefully tended curls trimmed and styled once every four months.
According to a former colleague in the Defence Research and Development Organisation that Mr Kalam headed for over a decade, the new president is vain about his mane. "He preens himself before the mirror before venturing out and often pulls a comb from his pocket and runs it lovingly through his hair," he said. He has been known to abruptly abandon important conferences, returning an hour later with his hair looking less unkempt.