New Addition to Our Rotary Family On 30th Aug 08

We Inducted Dr Medha Bhave in the club - She was sponsored by Rtn. Dr Subhash Mhaskar.

Dr Sunil Katkade rejoined our club, Rtn Ajit Vora persuaded him.

Sunil Deshpande was sponsored by Rtn Hemant Divekar.

Manjusha Mulye was sponsored by Rtn Subhash Mhaskar.

We welcome these smiling faces in Rotary family

Weekly meeting of 20th Aug 2008.

Our own Rotarian Dr. Mhaskar spoke about history of Medicine in the weekly meeting of 20th Aug 2008.

His speech covered 2500 yrs of history of modern allopathic medicine. He started with Hippocrates and his famous oath. He explained its time tested applicability even in today’s medical practice.

He explained the development of common day instrument like stethoscope. He explained procedure and chemicals used for anesthesia. One really wonders how people in those days endured surgeries without it.

He lucidly explained the efforts taken by people like Dr Hunter to acquire knowledge of human anatomy. What they endured to get human bodies for dissections including grave digging and body snatching despite the risk of attracting wrath of the law in those days.

The topic is so interesting and vast, it possibly requires days to introduce volume of knowledge he gathered during his 45+ years of experience. He is writing a gr8 column in our weekly bulletin Satyam about it.

Rtn. Pramod

27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for.............

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August. Itwill look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivateon Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles off earth. Be sure to watchthe sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons.The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.

-- Rtn. Sanjay Deshpande

Ashtapailu” – Gr**8 Presidents Day

“Ashtapailu” – Gr**8 Presidents Day




An event of a thousand years, a congregation of the most potent of numbers, 08-08-08 was celebrated by all Gr8 Rotarians of District 3140 in a fitting manner as “Ashtapailu” at the MIG Cricket Club in Bandra East.

The event was co-hosted by 8 clubs of our District (Mumbai Bandra-Kurla Complex, Mumbai nariman Point, Mumbai Shivaji Park, Mumbai Sion, Thana West, Thane Uptown, Thane Suburban and Mulund Hills) and the 8 Presidents and their spouses ably coordinated the entire evenings’ program.

The word Ashtapailu literally means “All-Rounder”.
It draws from the eight most important facets of a person’s personality that make him or her a successful contender in the race of life.

“Sahitya”- Your command over the language, your vocabulary, expression

“Sangeet”- The soul of your being that helps you appreciate all creations

“Natya”- Your body language, your gestures and movements that help to convey the right message.

“Udyog”- Your job or task that enhances your outlook with a variety of experiences.

“Vyavasaay”- Your salesmanship and marketing strategies that help you to stay ahead in the race.

“Chitra”- A well-rounded personality needs creative expression and this facet adds a much-needed dimension to your personality.

“Kreeda”- Sportsmanship, sporting talent, goal-setting abilities and team-work are worthy abilities to pursue in order to achieve your ambitions.

“Nritya”- A worthwhile talent to cultivate that helps you to de-stress, focus and enjoy life to the fullest.

The evening opened to registrants posing beside a vividly coloured banner to forever capture their memories as part of a permanent pixel parade.

A beautiful hand-crafted silver coin with the “Gr**8” motif was given to all, which would be an extremely cherished piece for years to come.

Everything in the room was specially coordinated to bring out the magic of the momentous day.

The large bouquet of multi-coloured flowers that was shaped in the form of an eight, the rangoli made with eight grains and shaped around two lamps, the colourful banner inviting all to enjoy the evening.

The event was introduced by the dynamic duo of Milind and Manjusha Ballal.
The young games host then took charge and what followed was two hours of frolicking fun and fellowship.

Participants were tested for their quick-wittedness and sharpness as they answered questions without saying the taboo words, Yes or No; an event based on Sahitya.

Sangeet, the next event jogged the participants’ memory as they reeled out songs that had numbers or numerals in them!

The Presidents’ “Udyog” this year? To dress up for the weekly meeting of course: Team members’ coordination, agility and skill were tested as they helped to dress up their President with a blazer, tie, collar, gavel, bell and pins.

The Natya event was one which had everyone in splits. Four ladies draped saris on to four willing yet skeptical male “Models”, who later walked the ramp much to the glee of a wildly cheering audience.

In Chitra, the participants drew a picture in parts and later explained it as a composite whole, thus bringing home the importance of being a perfect cog of the Rotary wheel.

The Kreeda event had all participants on their feet, as they passed the parcel along in a race to reach the finish line first.

As the clock chugged along to eight minutes past eight, a fabulous cake with our familiar “Gr8” motif was cut.

The most poignant moment was “The Gr8 Proclamation”, an oath taken in unison by all the greats of the District 3140. It said,

“We, the great presidents of District 3140,
do solemnly swear,
To uphold the eight guiding Principles of Rotary-
Love, Respect, Honesty, Service,
Tolerance, Justice, Friendship and Fellowship.
We promise to serve without prejudice,
to give and yet not receive,
to be just and fair in all that we undertake
and to the best of our abilities,
so help us God..”

A toast was raised with a unique commemorative mocktail, released especially for the evening made with, you guessed it: 8 ingredients!

The evening culminated with the event based on Natya, where the participants readily shook a leg with Dandiya sticks though they seemed a little baffled by the rock rhythm!

The DJ took his cue and all party animals thronged to the large square stage in the centre, and danced away to the latest tunes. The DG seemed to be in his element and very reluctantly left the stage to proceed for dinner.

Here again, the dinner hall had an ambience that all people enjoyed and appreciated, the large canopies, the well placed tables and tasty food ensured that everyone enjoyed a leisurely meal and left the hall satisfied.

Prizes were awarded to “Best Dressed President”- Male/Female, “Early Birds” and of course “Ashtapailu King and Queen”

Those who attended the event appreciated the entire experience and those who did not You really missed IT!

Meeting on 6th Aug 2008

Justice A.A. Halbe (Retd) Spoke on "Elite and Polity"

He said most of the mess we have in country is because we dont elect our political leader by excercising our Voting Right.

Teaching Japanese in Hindi/Marathi than in English

Japanese and Hindi/Marathi have more in common with each other than Japanese and English. The fact that Hindi/Marathi and Japanese have a Sanskrit past also helps. We believe that if we teach Japanese to Indians using Hindi/Marathi than English, we would enable Indians to learn Japanese much faster. Let’s look at the immense business opportunity this brings about as most of India does not speak English. The BPO/KPO/Legal Outsourcing world now has a world of opportunity open to it. A much larger world as most of the world GDP is not transacted in English. A large mass of Indians can now look at a better quality of life.

But let’s start at the beginning.

If you start reading any basic book which teaches you Japanese in English the first page would explain to you why a simple transliteration of Japanese to English is simply not possible. The structure of the Japanese language and hence the rules of Grammar are nothing like that of English. Learning any language would mean learning words but more important is learning how to speak entire sentences. When we communicate with others using a language we do not use words to communicate but entire sentences. Thus the structure of sentence construction is the most important part of any language. This is where Hindi/Marathi scores over English.

In English we like been upfront and always place verbs as early on in a sentence as possible. We like to commit ourselves very early on while speaking. This is the nature and culture of English. In Japanese and Hindi/Marathi we do it the other way around. A verb which is by far the most important part of a sentence because it denotes action is placed at the very end and not in the beginning of a sentence. This is why in Japanese and Hindi/Marathi we do not know what someone is saying unless he completes his sentence. The verb could be in the negative sense which would change the very meaning of the sentence. This is why a simple translation word by word of Japanese to English does not make any sense it all, but Japanese to Hindi/Marathi is very similar and much simpler. This is why English is a called a Subject – Verb-Object or SVO language and Hindi/Marathi/Japanese are Subject – Object – Verb SOV languages.

One more similarity. Nouns in English are placed at the end and in Japanese and Hindi/Marathi they are get pride of place and are at the beginning. Hindi/Marathi and Japanese have a similar structure and could go on and on with the similarities. We at the IMC believe that need of the hour is to take this idea to the next level and actually create learning material in Hindi/Marathi and encourage training institutions to actually start teaching Japanese in Hindi/Marathi and not English. The IMC can seed this thought amongst Indians, but as we are not a teaching institute we would encourage other organizations and people to do the actual teaching.

This idea came forth at a meeting where we were discussing how Japanese could be taught to Indians and a excellent Japanese trainer Sabina Sakraney came forth with this observation that teaching Japanese in Hindi/Marathi is more productive than teaching Japanese in English. The learning curve is shortened tremendously . She noticed this during the courses she taught. This is why we believe that unless there is more interaction between Indians and Japanese discussing Japanese culture, business, language etc newer and better ideas would not sprout. Unfortunately in Mumbai we have very little interaction amongst the various stakeholders in the Indian-Japanese space.

We would like to convert this e-mail into a white paper for wider circulation and would love to enable creating a actual course of teaching Japanese in Hindi/Marathi. We would also like the Government of India/Maharashtra to get involved along with the technology world. This would benefit the country in a big way.

This is why we are meeting on the 12th of August at the IMC at 1700 hours to take this concept to the next level. Please be there.

PS "Zen" is the Japanese pronunciation of a Chinese word ("chan"), which is a Chinese pronunciation of a Sanskrit word ("dhyan"), meaning "meditation"?

If you are interested in attending this meeting, you may kindly confirm your participation giving your contact details including mobile number by email to Mr. Subhash Menon, Head-IT & Dy. Secretary, Indian Merchants’ Chamber, e-mail: menon@IMCnet.org.

Water Resource Management By Dr. Malshe

On 30th July meeting, we had Dr Malshe Retired Prof. from UICT ( former UDCT) as speaker. He spoke lucidly about water management, a hot topic these days and major concern for all of us today and generations of tomorrow.

He made very simple observation about the water management.

1. In future water in the form of rain will not reduce and in fact will increase due to greenhouse effect.

2. Just the Konkan region of maharashtra, gets so much rain that we can have more than 100,000 litre of water per person in maharastra and all the rivers in eastern side of of the ghats can have water throughout the year. Just that it is all goes to sea

3. We can store large qty of water underground and increase water table

He suggested some simple and very effective methods to do that
· Collect the rainwater from the roof and store it in tanks
· Use the rainwater from the roofs and try and fill bore wells and open wells.
· If we dig a 1 mt. dip and 50cm wide trench along the fence of buildings or bungalow, and redirect the rainwater from roof to it – it will help increase ground water level substantially - A very simple thing to implement and a very elegant and effective method indeed

4. In case of multi storied building – he suggested the collection tanks at the each of upper floor so as to avoid pumping of the water again. This will save lot of energy used in pumping

After this Rtn. Dr. Lucky Kasat made a beautiful presentation about the International convention on water management which is being organized by our district 3140 under the leadership of PDG Kumar Kewalramani in Hotel Grand Hyatt on 19th Oct 08. Our Rtn Nilesh Amritkar helped in this presentation

Rtn Pramod Ambekar