A requiem to Boeing 747

It was with immense sadness that I read about Air India’s last remaining Boeing 747 making its last flight. Since the aircraft had been phased out gradually and the last passenger flight was in 2021, the event passed mostly unremarked. This last flight was a cargo flight. And thus, something truly great and beautiful passed into India’s aviation history. The plane was originally designed to carry heavy cargo for the US army. But in 1966 the now defunct Pan Am, known earlier as Pan American Airlines, decided it wanted an aircraft that could carry 250 passengers and with engines that consumed 25 percent less fuel than the old Boeing 707. In 1966 it placed an order for 50 jumbo jets, as the 747 came to be known.

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Consistency is the key

Great people don’t do different things. They approach the same things differently. Their success stories are a series of small steps. Their rehearsal is the real thing. They practise their required ABCs to perfection to produce that X factor — they know that to write an essay they have to first master their grammar. The drill of their routine is done to death. Repetition after repetition until it sinks and syncs with the subconscious.

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A fun day out for girls

Around 150 young girls were the centre of attraction at the V R Punjab Mall in Kharar as they shopped for new clothes to their heart’s content at one of the posh boutiques there. These children, between 8–15 and from an orphange, were escorted to the mall by the members of RAC Chandigarh Himalayan, RID 3080, under the club’s project Choti si Khwaish. “It was heartwarming to watch their gleeful faces as they picked and tried on various garments. It was a magical two hours as their laughter echoed through the store,” says club president Prerna Kashyap.

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A lake in Pune gets a new life

Rotary Club of Pune Kothrud, RID 3131, has embarked on the Ramnadi Rejuvenation Sustainability Project to restore the Ramnadi river originating in the Sahyadri ranges and flowing through northwest Pune comprising Bhugaon, Bhukum, Bavdhan, Pashan, Baner and Aundh regions. The river has turned into a sewage canal due to dumping of construction debris and garbage.

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RC Roop Nagar conducts crucial training to save lives

When he was on a tour last year to a famous winery in ­Waiheke Island of New ­Zealand, a very famous tourist destination, Dr BPS Parmar, past president of the Rotary Club of Roop Nagar, RID 3080, noticed, while disembarking at the ferry station, an automated external defibrillator (AED) installed at the waiting area. “I noted that this device, which delivers an emergency shock to the chest in a bid to revive a victim of a sudden cardiac arrest, had been donated by RC Waiheke Island,” recalls the laparoscopy surgeon who has specialised in metabolic surgery.

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