The speed, alacrity and heart with which the entire Rotary world, particularly Rotarians in India, responded to the COVID-19 pandemic is heart-warming. Without any nudging from anybody, India Rotarians quickly reached relief in terms of critical hospital equipment, sanitisers, masks, PPEs, and cooked meals to lakhs of

I happened to be in Mexico City and watched with fascination and admiration the call given by a collective of Mexican women’s associations to observe this year’s International Women’s Day (March 8) by simply disappearing from public places — offices, public transportation, grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls…

Over the last five years, almost all the RI Presidents have told me that no place on earth celebrates Rotary events as colourfully and grandly as Rotarians do in India. Forget a Zone Institute which has so much of colour, music, dance and dazzle, even a district

When RI President-elect Holger Knaack unveiled his theme at the International Assembly — Rotary Opens Opportunities — the first recall was of RI Director Bharat Pandya’s pet mantra on Rotary being all about “hope and opportunities”. As Rotary Club of Calcutta celebrated its 100th birthday bang on

The Indore Institute, with RI Director Bharat Pandya as convener and Raju (T N) Subramanian as chairman, is bound to be remembered for a long time, for several factors. One, it was held at Indore, a city that has not been on too many people’s bucket list of

Reading and rereading classics is a constant source of joy for me. It amazes me that every couple of years when I revisit my favourites such as Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss; Harper

While I am not an admirer of little girls being made to walk the ramp, or sing and dance in television competitions, a news item of 9-year-old Daisy-May Demetre, a physically-challenged girl from Birmingham, walking the ramp in Paris caught the eye. This because she was endorsing

After the Godhra tragedy and the riots that followed in Gujarat in 2002, I went to Ahmedabad as a journalist to report on the ground situation. Seventeen years have gone by, but I vividly remember, as though it had been told to me yesterday, the reply I

In countries like India, which are not welfare states in the true meaning of the word, unlike, say, the Nordic ones, that take total care of the medical, nutritional and housing needs of their senior citizens, helping the elderly to live with dignity is a huge challenge.

It was with grief and a deep sense of loss that the Rotary world in India digested the news of former Governor of Uttarakhand and Past RI Director Sudarshan Agarwal’s demise. That he will be missed could be seen from the outpouring of grief and reminiscences on

If any evidence was required of Rotary International really embracing youth energy, enthusiasm and leadership, and walking the talk when it comes to making Rotaract a member of RI through the recent CoL resolution, it was amply evident at the Hamburg Rotary Convention. Every senior RI leader,