Ali Manikfan is man with a myriad abilities. His contributions spread across different fields
Bengaluru: Ali Manikfan, from Lakshadweep, is 82 years. Yet, he can shame youngster lesser than half his age.
In the evening of his life, he still remains enthusiastic like a child, learning new things and always spending time in reading, writing and the like.
We must also tell you that Ali was presented the Padmashri. True to the term, he is multifaceted. In his younger days, he worked in marine biology, marine research, geography, astronomy, social science and even shipbuilding!
Interestingly, he has not studied beyond grade 7. Yet he is a polyglot; an expert in 14 languages.
Now he lives in Kerala, but most part of his life was spent in Lakshadweep.
As reported by Dainik Bhaskar, he said, "When I was 9 years old, family members sent me to Kannur in Kerala to study, because many of my father's acquaintances lived there. At that time hostels did not exist, so they used to stay in their houses. I stayed there till the seventh grade, but then returned to the island, because there were a lot of problems and it was difficult to stay away from the island”.
It was in the year 1956 that Ali moved to Kolkata for 6 months. During his stay there in Kolkata, he got books of different subjects. Curious to know more about them, he started reading about them. So when he returned from there, he brought a lot of books in different languages to the island.
He says, “By reading these books, I learned Arabic, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Latin, French, Russian, German, Sinhalese, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu”.
Back in his place, he developed interest in fishes. Reports add that a fish species has been named after him.
Then, he offered his contributions in ship building as well.
Not just that, he has phenomenal contributions in the field of making barren land fertile as well.
In this way, Ali has been a man of myriad qualities
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