ROTARACT CLUB

I was asked to revive the Rotaract Club of Madras Central in 1986. It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity as it helped me gain confidence in public speaking. It helped me get the organising skills as i had the opportunity of organising meetings, conferences and events. It also helped me move out of the CA circle and get aquainted with people from different walks of life.

I was the President of the Club and organised several events and programmes. The most memorable ones are the "Arts Competition" for school children and the "Bank Audit" Seminar.

The Arts Competition for school children was held in St.Louis School for Deaf and Dum in Adyar. There were 800 school children in that competition and nearly 500 of those children were physically challenged. It was a wonderful event which was very well organised and went through very smoothly without any glitches or hurdles.

The "Bank Audit" seminar was another big event that we organised. The day before the seminar i met with an accident. I was riding my TVS 50 with Sathyamurthy as my pillion. I skidded and fell and was injured very badly with bruises all over my body. With that pain i managed to conduct the Bank Audit Seminar successfully. The highlights of that Seminar were (1) We introduced the topic "Expectations of the Banker" for the first time and (2) I presented a paper.

We used to have the Rotaract Club Meetings in "Childrens Garden School". It was great fun to have those meetings and address the club members. We had Sabareeswaran of OMS Motors, my brother T.P.Ashok from I.O.B. and so many others in the club as active members.

I had one of the meetings in my office when i was working in Sterling Resorts and one of our members Shridhar Sampath walked through the Glass door in the reception. He literally and physically walked through the glass and brought down the entire glass with huge thunderous noise. The entire staff including the Management came to the reception because of the huge noise. To our surprise and shock Shridhar Sampath was standing there as if nothing had happened.

I used to go to Semmanchery Village on ECR on my TVS 50 to meet the villagers and help them through the community service programmes of our parent club. We used to regularly go to Mr.Kannan's house in West CIT Nagar to do "reading for the Blind". We did a programme on putting the "Bulls Eye" sticker on Motorcyles in Chennai. I went to Police Commissioner's Office to get the permission.

We had the support and guidance of Rotarian Jeyakumar of Raj Paris Civil Constructions - a wonderful person to deal with.

I still remember the meetings we used to have for the Rotaract Club with D.Sriram, Arvind, Sam, Karthik, Shridhar, Ashok, Sabareeswaran being very active and major contributors in the community service and other programmes. My memory is fading and i am not able to recollect all the members and all the programmes....

The two years that i spent with Rotaract Club was filled with lot of activity, responsibility, challenges, experience and thrill. It was a very rewarding and wonderful experience. I cherish those memories and feel proud to have got that experience at the right age...

T.P.Anand
Dubai.
16th December 2010