The Members’ Roster informs me I joined the Club on April 4, 2006, and I have no reason to dispute that! However, I had a much earlier association, quite informally and indirectly. My father Dr. Ajit Kumar Basu had been a member of the club in the early 1970s for two or three years. In those days, the weekly meetings were at Great Eastern Hotel. At home, aged 15 or 16, 1 listened to him recounting his experience of the meetings and speakers.

He would bring the Chaka back, and 1 think 1 gave the contents even’ more attention than he did! The different activities seemed interesting with their palpable self-congratulatory current. Understandable perhaps. In those days, the growth of the economic pie was slow, and how to cut it into smaller and smaller pieces was the obsessive focus, one could say misguided from a post-1991 perspective. Rotary activities continued under that unpropitious economic sky.

Calcutta was much more of a ‘small world’ than Kolkata is today. The Club’s leaders were social titans in the city, from business, media, professions and the like. Everybody knew everybody in the small circle, and additionally everybody in the Club was male! It was a straightforward patriarchal division of the Rotary world between Rtns. and Rt. Anns, reflecting a fading social milieu. Much has changed in today’s Rotary as I have experienced it, and all for the better.

My mother and I participated in an interesting Rotary occasion, probably historic for the Club. There was inauguration of a large hall at Rotary Sadan, intended as the N.C. Laharry Children’s Library. This was in 1972 or thereabouts possibly. I seem to recall it was on the ground floor, but there we have the auditorium now and so it might have been the Library as now operational on the first floor.

Anyway, my mother had the assignment of picking up the Chief Minister’s wife Mrs. Maya Ray from her residence and bringing her to Rotary Sadan, and I had tagged along. It was my first and only experience of a Rotary event until i joined the Club in 2006. I remember the bonhomie and that there were inspirational speeches, the content of course long faded into oblivion.

Attendance was more strictly observed in those days, and my father’s work schedule made it difficult for him to continue for long. I think he quit somewhere in 1974 or ’75, and the Chakas stopped coming for the next 30 years! However interesting, they had not left me with an irresistible drive to be a Rotarian one day.

Had it not been for Rtn Dileep Rohatgils insistence I would not have found myself as a green-badger in 2006. We would meet at the Calcutta Club, and what started as a suggestion grew more emphatic with subsequent meetings.

Finding me resisting, and mobilising additional support, he finally summoned me one evening with Rtn. Dr. S.K. Sharma sitting next to him. This time it was a simple instruction. Orientation talk on Sunday morning at Rotary Sadan. Be there. So I was, and the Chaka started rolling in again.

The 14 years since have passed quickly. In these Covid-confined dayst remembering just the Tuesday afternoon walk to and from Rotary sadan is enough to bring tears of nostalgia! Yes, it has been an outstanding opportunity to come into contact with personalities from different walks of life, not just our members, but also our guests. The guest speakers kept the mind open to new and fascinating realms of knowledge. Indeed, i think i enjoyed the 2013-14 year most in which, as Programmes head, i had to find interesting speakers for the afternoon meetings.

And I’m glad to say a few of the speakers eventually joined us as members too. Another year i was put in charge of Membership Development. I gave us the challenge of returning to a membership of 300, but this was easier said than achieved. In recent years, the tide may be turning and, if all goes well, we could again get a wave of bright new members.

So many pleasant memories! On the social front, not just the great fellowship evenings but the special events, cricket matches, steamer parties, the afternoons at country homes, the brunches at the city’s top hotels, Holi Milan, Members Nites, Bijoya Sammilan, Christmas parties, theatre, music, dance and so on.

And, of course, all the different social projects, so wide in variety, from scholarships and awards to the needy and meritorious to treats for children, from infrastructure projects in villages to job fairs at Rotary Sadan.(l specially remember our steamer trip to Chotomollakhali an isolated faraway island in Sunderbans for inauguration of solar lighting at school and a solar generator at the health centre) to job fairs at Rotary Sadan.

I was a regular at the Independence Day and Republic Day ceremonies and thoroughly enjoyed the children’s cultural shows. Last year, we started working on the Children’s Library, a project of huge untapped potential. The list has been long, both of beneficiaries and benefactors. Comprising all the good work over 100 years, it’s been a saga of pride and service! There can be no other response than a long standing ovation and a commitment to keep the aspidistra flying for those in need.

Relatively speaking, i must confess i have been something of a backbencher or at best middle bencher in Rotary, though not playing truant from that role. Probably this has been because of my commitments to social projects elsewhere that are Rotary in spirit although not in name.

The Centenary year has been an eye-opener. The enormous and enthusiastic hard work put in by the President, Centenary Chair and team deserve sincere appreciation and will be remembered for a very long time. They have inspired many others as the build-up of the work for the new century gathers pace.

My best wishes to the new President and his team. ‘Rotary Opens Opportunities’ in quite a changed environment that will remain uncertain until a vaccine is found to counter the global pandemic. At which point the new vaccine will acquire the same urgency for Rotary as the polio vaccine did over many past years. Let’s hope Science and Service come together quickly and help to restore a world ‘fragmented into narrow domestic walls’, and that our Club leads the way forward again!