Swearing in India's first woman president

President APJ Abdul Kalam is spending his last night in Rashtrapati Bhawan. He will be moving out on Wednesday afternoon when new President Pratibha Patil escorts him to a car to head for an army guest house that will be his temporary abode for few hours before flying to Chennai to return as a teacher in the Anna University.

Pratibha Patil will be ushered into the Rashtrapati Bhawan around noon on Wednesday from a side-gate without much ceremony and waiting to receive and greet her in the library of the Rashtrapati Bhawan annexe will be Dr Kalam.

The two will then emerge from the building to take the salute of the President's bodyguard led by its commandant Colonel Mehmood. He will actually address Dr Kalam who was still the President for him requesting him to inspect the bodyguard: 'Rashtrapati, aapke angrakshak aapke nirakshan ke liye tayyar hain.'

Dr Kalam may or may not notice that he used to be formally addressed as 'Shriman' in such ceremonies in the past but that was the way the military has sorted out the problem of how to address his successor joining him on the inspection, after much debate on whether to address her as 'Shrimati' or stick to 'Shriman' or use 'Madam.'

All Central Secretariat offices, that is the North Block and the South Block, will be shut at 1 pm, giving a half-day holiday to the staff as they fall on the route Pratibha Patil's ceremonial cavalcade will take to reach the Parliament House from the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

On the both sides of the road will be stationed 1000 soldiers, including 30 officers, in rows to salute the outgoing and incoming Presidents driving down the Raisina Road together in a limousine, escorted by the horseback-mounted President's bodyguard dressed in ceremonial regalia.

There was not a single woman in the dress rehearsal carried out on Sunday when the soldiers -- 700 from the Indian Army and 150 each from Air Force and Navy -- lined up for the dummy run to rule out any breach or security lapse during the travel together of their outgoing and incoming Supreme Commanders.

The Army's Delhi area command chief Major General KGS Oberoi, who will be organising this 1000-man salute to the cavalcade refused to say if some women officers and soldiers would be inducted in the ceremony on Wednesday.

The minutest details of the ceremonial arrival in the Parliament House from the President's House have been drawn up, including where Dr Kalam and Pratibha Patil will sit. Dr Kalam will be occupying the left passenger's seat of the limousine while Pratibha Tai will be on the right during the drive to the Parliament House but the order will be reversed when both drive back to the President's House.

The custom is that the President, in this case Dr Kalam, should be nearest to the entrance of the Parliament House when the car parks, while Pratibha Patil has to sit in the left to be nearest when she alights at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on returning after taking the oath in the Central Hall at 2.30

pm.

Ironically, Central government offices since Tuesday morning have been pulling down his mandatory portrait from their walls on an official order -- without awaiting his actual exit and not even caring that he will still be addressing the nation in the evening as the President and hosting a farewell dinner later to the Council of Minister in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The portrait of the new President may not go up at the vacant tell-tale space on Wednesday immediately after Pratibha Patil takes the oath in the afternoon as she is yet to pose for the official portrait to be circulated by the government to all its offices for the mandatory display.

Meanwhile, as Dr Kalam and Pratibha Patil will emerge from the Parliament House and move to the car, the Army will give a 21-gun salute, firing the blanks 21 times from the old field guns parked somewhere in the vicinity away from the sight to book the message of India having a new President.

On arrival at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the new President will first alight and walk to the forecourt of her abode for the next five years for the guard of honour when Colonel Pandherker, the parade commander, march up smartly and invite her to inspect the inter-services guard of honour ready to receive her.

The ceremony over, Pratibha Tai will escort Dr Kalam to a point where he will get into his car to be driven away to his temporary abode of a one-bedroom bungalow in the Delhi cantonment at 26, The Mall, for a little rest and then fly to Chennai to return to the university he had left five years ago as a teacher. The bungalow is actually a guest house meant for the visiting generals.

And, so the return of the man to a one-bedroom apartment after spending five years in a 340-room Rashtrapati Bhawan. Dr Kalam, however, will not feel any inconvenience as he hardly used three or four rooms in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

A separate bungalow is getting ready for him in Delhi but Dr Kalam has indicated that most of time he would be spending in Anna University in Chennai and other universities that have invited him to be the visiting professor.

In Chennai, he would, in fact, stay in the two-room set at the Anna University guest house where he used to stay until 2002. As Vice-chancellor Dr D Viswanathan was quoted, Dr Kalam insisted on phone to him on July 16 that he would not take any bigger accommodation.

"We offered him an independent bungalow or some other big house, but he insisted that he would stay only in the same room. He also told me that he would like to have the same office as before," Dr Viswanathan said.

So adieu Janab Abul Phakir Jainulabadin Abul Kalam. You really won hearts of millions as the people's President and children's Kalam Chacha.