Two new members and a great Quiz!

Adding members in Rotary is always special - and adding two members to take our tally up to 94 makes it very special!

Rtn.Nagabhushanam introduced his friend, Mr. Markandeya Sarma, who has already attended several of our meetings and fellowships and is keen to bring a couple of his friends in as members soon! Mr. Sarma has the classification Consultant - Apparel Sourcing and Marketing.

The second new member was Mr. V V Prasad, introduced by Rtn. Amarnath. Mr Prasad has been loaned the classification - Electrical Engineering, and owns a communications equipment company, Nomus Comm-Systems. He is an avid marathon runner and golfer and also plays a part in many community service organisations.

Rtn. Vijay Madhira administered the Oath and inducted the new members and announced their classifications. Rtn. Ramakrishna (better known as RK) pinned the members and handed over their membership certificates and the Four Way Test plaques.







A HEARTY WELCOME TO BOTH OUR NEWEST MEMBERS!











AND THEN...... ON TO THE QUIZ!
Our favourite Quiz Master, Rtn. Ratan Jalan started off the current Rotary Year with a Quiz, and he was back with another for the last week of the year too. It was so clear that a great deal of preparation goes into his quizzes - not only are the questions carefully chosen, but

they are accompanied by great photographs and illustrations!
The pick of the questions was the identity of the person shown in the image on the right. There were lots of guesses from both the teams, Those of you who did not attend the meeting - take a few guesses before going to the end of this blog to get the answer. Rtn. Abburi Ramaiah got a special cheer for getting this answer right! Several other questions racked the brains - from the diameter of the Earth (12,750 kms - RK got this almost right) to the second richest of the newly-elected MPs (Mr. Konda Visweshwar Reddy - son-in-law of Dr. Pratap Reddy of Apollo Hospitals and husband of Mrs. Sangita Reddy, with assets of Rs. 528 crores - whew!) to the amount that Jennifer Lopez's butt is insured for - $ 27 million!
A wonderful time was had by all, with lots of cheerful cross-talk and wild guesses. Finally, the Quiz Master judged Rtns. Abburi Ramaiah and Dr. Srikanth to have been the outstanding quizzers and senior Rtn. Ramakrishna Reddy gave away prizes to both of them.
Many, many thanks to Rtn. Ratan for providing a wonderful evening's entertainment!
Answer to the identity of the mystery woman in the picture - it's Antonia Maino, known to us today as Sonia Gandhi! Not so much a Quiz question as one from "Believe It Or Not"!!!!

Till the next time - Cheers, Raghav

Vocational visit to The Birthplace

Most of us would have noticed the new building with a bright pink sign The Birthplace on Road No. 2, Banjara Hills, opposite the Harley Davidson showroom. This is the latest place in Hyderabad for "new arrivals", and it has been entirely designed by Rtn. Ratan Jalan, who runs a health-care consultancy - MEDIUM (sounds like in-between large and small, but I think it was to stress on the sound of Med as in Medical!)
As Ratan explained - unlike a regular hospital, where people go because they are ill and there is therefore anxiety. tension and sadness all around, the expectant mother who goes for delivery is all set for an extremely happy event, and it's a time to party when the baby arrives!
When Tarun Sariparupu, a bright (and wealthy!) entrepreneur returned to India from the US, he was looking for a health-care project, since he believed that was the next big thing for India after I.T. Ratan convinced him not to go for another large multi-specialty hospital, which would be like all the others, but to set up this boutique enterprise which would be unique and meet a real need of a section of society.

The whole appearance of the hospital is bright, spacious, colourful and invokes a happy feeling! There are no visitors' timings and other such restrictions. There is no separate nursery where the babies are taken away and placed - the baby is always with the mother, where it belongs! All the rooms are made as comfortable as (or even more so than!) the mother would have at home.
They also have a unique pricing model - a fixed price for the entire delivery process, irrespective of whether it turns out to be a normal or a C-section delivery! And the presence of the father at the birth event is mandatory (most hospitals do not allow this at all!) Not "affordable" to all, but, as Ratan put it to us, still a small fraction of

what would be spent at the wedding which precedes this happy event!
It was a wonderful vocational visit, where we got to hear from Ratan, Tarun and the head of gynaecology, Dr. Pratibha Naraian. The arrangements for the meeting itself were nothing short of marvellous, with little round tables at which we were seated and a scrumptuous array of snacks 

and refreshments which certainly substituted handsomely for my dinner that night! And the meeting was followed by a walk around the entire facility. The attendance was not great - those of you who did not come really missed a great evening...
Thank you so much, Ratan, for this opportunity to get to know the kind of work you do and its great result!