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.

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.

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.

Where do I begin to tell the story of how engaging it was to read Amor Towles’s The Lincoln Highway, all 576 pages of it in smallish print? Possibly for the first time in over 60 years of reading, I fell in love with a chapter.

The Fall of Kabul — Despatches from Chaos by journalist Nayanima Basu, (Bloomsbury; Rs.599) promises a lot, but ends up a tad disappointing. Make no mistake about it…any journalist who has landed in the Afghan capital in August 2021, barely 10 days before its heartbreaking capitulation to the Taliban without any fight or resistance, will have a captivating and gripping story to tell.

With its recent completion of two more Happy Schools, the Rotary Club of ­Dombivli, RI District 3142, has so far transformed, over the last four years, 18 government, government-aided and privately managed schools located in rural and tribal areas surrounding Murbad and Shahapur taluks in Maharashtra. The total amount spent on this project is over Rs.1 crore to help improve the conditions in which children learn.