Vol. 59 No. 1 • June 30, 2017

“We are the warriors we were waiting for”!!

So what is Rotary to me?

A global family committed to alleviate misery and make a positive change to the lives of the billions of less fortunate people around the world.

Closer home, the Rotary Club of Bombay has been a very rare experience for me.

At a time when I was adjusting to a new way of life, experience of helping build Bhavishya Yaan from scratch was an enriching experience. It gave me several things. Purpose, to begin with. Great learnings working with veterans like Arun Sanghi. Great friends. Great hope, seeing the children blossom before our very eyes. Great respect for the Rotary Annes, right from Rashna Cooper to the present group who dedicated themselves to monitoring a project that was destined to change the lives of the underprivileged children. Great partners who have stood by us for eight years now.

But that is only a microcosm of what the RCB is.

Beginning with the Talwada project and the heroic efforts of Dr. Rahim Muljiani, Dr. Ajit Deshpande, Dr. Rumi Jehangir, to the more recent Jal Jeevan, Women’s Empowerment, Urban Heritage, Cancer Aid, Environment, to name a few, RCB has taught me that human endeavour and camaraderie can in fact be transformed into great service for the community.

But there is so much more that needs to be done.

We now have a clutch of large on-going projects. We need to consolidate, integrate and grow them. A large Club like ours needs many more projects and much more growth in the existing ones.

We must never underestimate our strengths, nor must we rest on our laurels.

This year we shall see a focus on the child, and the child within us.

We will try and build scale in our Cotton Green medical center. We will build the Elder Care Home at Alibaug. We will launch an Elder Day Care center named “Ananda Yaan”, a mission toward happiness. We shall try and suffuse the lives of our elders with happiness and caring.

We shall try and make not just society but members more healthy and involve every member, specially those who have served the Club so well for many years, in every aspect of our activities.

We shall hopefully play a useful part in the lives of those who are physically and mentally challenged, and see what we can do in our villages where India exists as Bharat.

We shall see no mountain too high to scale, no valley too wide to cross.

As one army leader famously said…”We are the warriors we were waiting for”!!