Dear readers, the story of ‘The Old Number One’ continues. For the benefit of those who are new to our club, here is a snippet of our club’s history.

The Rotary Club of Calcutta is the longest continuously run Rotary Club in Mainland Asia. Founded on 26th Sept 1919, the Club concluded 100 years of outstanding service to the community in the Rotary year 2019-20. Today it is the largest club in terms of membership in Rotary District 3291. The club’s membership profile is a melting pot of businessmen, enterpreneurs, top management executives, legal, medical and finance professionals who hail from the who’s who of Kolkata. The age profile is similarly varied, making the club a vibrant body where community service binds all for networking and fellowship. The first Asian President of Rotary International Late Nitish chandra Laharry was from our Club. Our Club has, in its own premises in Kolkata, an auditorium, conference rooms, a library and vocational and cultural training centres for children and young adults. Our Club, endearingly known as ‘The Old Number One’ is the prime mover and co-founder of the ‘Circle of Centenary Rotary Clubs’, the others being the Rotary Clubs of Shanghai and Manila.

A key function of the Club is to hold regular meetings. A matter of note for all and one of great pride for us is that we have held more than 4700 meetings of the Club. In times of Covid 19, the Club has seamlessly moved on to holding online meetings. The main feature of any meeting is to host a speaker for an interactive session with members. Our speakers come from diverse backgrounds and the sessions are very lively and takeaways are many! Just for information, our portals have been graced by the Mahatma, the Dalai Lama and numerous Governors and luminaries.

Dear readers, as we rush to print, we, the editors, on behalf of President Purnendu and his Centenary Team, thank you sincerely for journeying with us. We do hope that you have enjoyed going through this book as much as we have enjoyed putting it together for you. 3 cheers for Rotary Club of Calcutta!