GSE Team from India
by Lorine Parks
Our young guests from India, part of the Group Study Exchange, presented themselves as our program. In their thirties, they are a lively group, who take an interest in helping the world around them. They come from Chennai, also known as Madras, Rotary District 3230, the capital city of the southern state of Tamil Madru.
Gothic and Romanesque churches from the English and Portuguese colonial period vie with mosques and Hindu temples and a famous Hindu monument over 800 years old. There are parks, a zoo with Asian elephants (the kind with smaller ears and tusks than their African cousins) and tigers, which belong to the subcontinent alone.
Each member told us about his or her life, beginning with the team leader, Mr. G. Gnanavelan, a Rotarian who has been president of his Madras Cosmos club and regional director. He showed pictures of events in his life, such as a wedding ceremony of the “three knots,” relationship, liberty and acceptance as a family member. He constructs large apartment buildings, and enjoys photography.
He has one dearly loved daughter, and has come to believe in the “zen way” of life, living in the moment.
The next speaker, Chithra Priya, in a Rotary polo shirt and jeans, is a digital filmmaker and also active in Greenpeace and in saving the Olive Ridley turtle from extinction. She also competes in motorcycle racing and is in the top six racers in India, setting a precedent for women. Her race courses have taken her all over the country, even up to the Himalayas in war-torn Kashmir, which riders had to get a government permit to enter. She races Indian-made bikes, and is proud of her certificate for the 10,000 miles in 24 hours ride, the “the Sore Saddle” award.
Next we heard from M. Gunasekaran who thanked Rotary for making India now polio-free. India is a democratic country with an active free press, and as a journalist he writes socio-political articles for the Madras Times, covering such subjects as slums, untouchables and the caste system, and health coverage for poor families. His hobbies are traveling and visiting western ghats in India. His hero is P. V.Ramaswamy, 1879-1973, a Dravidian social reformer who tried to do away with the caste system and worked for women’s rights.
His marriage was non –traditional, “a self-respect marriage without a priest.” He and his wife have a seven-year old son.
The next speaker, Uma Maheswari, wearing traditional sari and pearl necklace, began by saying, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Educated at Madras University with a master’s degree, she is a scholar who teaches future entrepreneurs business administration and human resource management. Her husband is an entrepreneur. She has a son, and her father is a retired civil servant, her mother a homemaker. They live in a communal apartment building with their in-laws, sharing a joint kitchen. Her hobbies are painting, music, and she loves teaching.
By now it was clear that young families in India today are encouraged by the government to have only one child to control the population growth. India is the world’s second most populous nation, one in every six people on earth being Indian. In China the one-child program has resulted in a generation of unusually spoiled only children. India hopes to avoid that, partly by such quasi-communal family living arrangements.
Our last speaker, Velayuyham Ganesh, could have been a Californian, with his Rotary polo shirt and jeans, sunglasses pushed up into his mop of black hair. His hobbies include being a cricketer, having achieved enough centuries to reach the equivalent of hitting 6 homes runs in one baseball game.
He is a graphic designer and event manager. He dotes on his daughter Thruthi, and was president of Interact in high school when he was growing up. His interests are literature, music, music videos, and web development.
When this team signed the children’s book for the Downey Library, each wrote “I love you,” in Tamil, Hindi and English. The book was A Children’s Animal Atlas of the World, and they found the page with India on it, and approved of the Bengal tiger and Himalayan falcon. This reporter when taking the book to Claudia at the Library made sure she saw these special inscriptions.