Throughout our lives, from school, through college, attending sermons in the places of worship we frequent according to our faith, we are taught to be good and courteous, indulge in appropriate behaviour, and so on. In short, we are trained to conform… to societal norms. Hence the

It doesn’t have the colour and razzle-dazzle of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the multi-crore Bollywood blockbuster starring superstar Salman Khan who risks his life for the deaf and mute beautiful little girl Munni, who has accidentally strayed across the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir border, into an Indian city. The angelic looking

A caveat first… I don’t set much store by International Woman’s Day… or any other day “celebrating” mothers, fathers, sons and so on. These are marketing gimmicks at best, to fuel the sale of a variety of products. The image right now before me

India, its social and cultural fabric, ethos, values… in short, its heartbeat, is much, much bigger than a film. But in more ways than one, the Bollywood blockbuster and Shahrukh Khan/Deepika Padukone starrer Pathaan, which just crossed the phenomenal Rs.1,000-crore mark at the box office, as I

Within just one year of Rotary making environmental protection one of its areas of focus, we are facing a man-made disaster in Joshimath, located in the Himalayas. Fortunately, before the government gag order, we learnt from the National Remote Sensing Centre of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation)

Post-pandemic, the meet-and-greet mega meetings of Rotary are picking up steam and this was proved at Visakha Vista, the zone institute held recently in Visakhapatnam, which garnered some 1,000-odd registrations. It was organised under the bold conceptualisation of RI director and convenor Mahesh Kotbagi, and efficient and

With preservation and protection of the environment now being a focus area of Rotary, global climate change meetings are getting active participation from top Rotary leadership. Last year, at the COP26 meet, the then RI President Shekhar Mehta had participated and this year, at the COP27 held

As the war continues to rage in Ukraine, with no end in sight, and lives are lost on both sides, and violence continues to devastate the country, violence and conflict situations around the world have once again come into focus. Bringing peace into the world is one

Ascribe it to the ironic times in which we live that a world torn apart by aggression, strife, war, and divided so deeply along regional, communal and class lines, where the havoc caused by the Covid pandemic coupled with ferocious natural disasters have sent several nations reeling

Another Independence Day has come and gone, this more special than others, being the 75th year of our freedom. Over 75 years, as we have moved towards progress and development, explosion of industrial output, excellence in science and technology, particularly IT, the struggle Indian leaders underwent under

In the Rotary world, it is a great honour to get a visit from a serving RI president. Well, before June 2022, the last time the Rotary News Trust office in Chennai had an RI president calling in was in 2007 when President Wilf Wilkinson visited our