Success has no other shortcuts apart from the ones that tell you;  control thoughts, delete negativity, alternate actions and shift attitudes to become positive! Israelmore Ayivor (b.1989) Writer & Life skills Entrepreneur  2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of creation of Magic Cube, popularly known as Rubik’s cube invented by Ernő Rubik, a shy Hungarian Professor of Architecture. His motivation for designing the magic cube was to give a puzzle to his students to play around for enhancing their spatial creativity. Realising that he had accidentally created a spatial-logic toy, Rubik applied for patent and started participating in international toy fairs. In one such fair held in Germany he met Tom Kremer, a marketer who acquired the rights for the magic cube and in 1980 licensed it for manufacturing to the Ideal Toy Company changing the name to Rubik Cube. Within three years 300 millions of Rubik Cubes were sold across the world![1] Around the same year (1974) whe...

  Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also love of humanity.  Hippocrates, Greek Physician and Philosopher (460-377 BC)  27, 28 and 29th September 2024 were three important days in the life of senior ophthalmologist Dr. K.V. Ravishankar for a couple of reasons – he was part of centenary celebration of his Alma Matter, Mysore Medical College and on this joyous occasion he was honoured by his batch mates for the high quality eye-care services that he has been rendering to the community, both for the paying and non-paying patients, in India and outside India, with the same enthusiasm and rigour for nearly three decades! Throughout these three decades of his professional journey Dr. Ravishankar has been balancing rigour and changing technologies on the one hand with compassion and commerce on the other, while maintaining the enthusiasm to serve the community. Kowshik Venkatasubbaiah Ravishankar (b.1963) had most of his schooling in Hassan before joining Mysore Med...

  He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. Confucius (551- 479 BCE), Chinese Philosopher The greatness of social organisations like Rotary International is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members. Eradication of Polio in India by 2014 is synonymous with Rotary. Through the Polio Plus Programme initiated in 1985, Rotary was the first humanitarian organisation to visualise Polio-free world. Since 1988, being one of the founding members of Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)[1] Polio eradication has been the priority project of Rotary across the world. Incidentally, it was in 1988 I began my journey in Rotary. But it took more than fifteen years for me to meet a member whose main interest was to serve the community using the Rotary platform.  I had first met Jayaraman during 2003 when he was President of his home club – Rotary Bangalore R.T. Nagar, as he wanted his club to be part of the eye-care project – support...

  To be successful, you have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart. Thomas J Watson Sr. former CEO of IBM (1874- 1956)  Jeevan joined the company of which I was one of the two founder-directors as commercial manager in 1986. Earlier to that, after completing B.Com (1978) from Ramnarayan Chellaram College of Commerce, Jeevan worked for TVS Madras Auto Service, Bangalore in the accounts department for three years and in the Sales department for a couple of years. Having worked in the two key areas of business – finance and sales, Jeevan decided to join hands with three of his colleagues to establish an enterprise to market Auto Spare parts in 1983. Even after three years of company’s existence Jeevan did not see the needed passion in his three partners to grow the business and hence decided to take up employment again that was offered by my fellow founder-director. Because of his entrepreneurial nature, from the day he joined, he took lot of initiativ...

  Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German Theoretical Physicist   Though many may go through the process of getting educated either because of family support or economic compulsions, all may not realise the fact that education is an effective tool to train their minds to critically think with a view to analyse or innovate. Research is necessarily a thinking process because of its probing nature. I was in my early fifties when I registered for a Phd programme and was fortunate to have Prof. Ramesh as my fellow research scholar. He indirectly provided the much needed motivation to me not just during the doctoral research, but even after completion of our theses, by being an excellent role model, constantly highlighting the importance of rigour that is needed for research. Ramesh Narasimhan (b.1955) hails from a family of researchers. He graduated in Electrical Engineering with honours from Birla Institute ...

  Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action;  try to use ordinary situations. Jean-Paul Richter (1723-1825) German Novelist Just before the birth of the new millennium, I lost my younger brother to cancer and he was only forty six years old. During that year (1999) I was the Executive director of an export company travelling abroad three to four times a year,  I was busy in forming my team of office-bearers having taken up the responsibility of leading the Rotary club of which I was a member since 1988, and raising funds for the service projects, thus getting prepared to function as the President with effect from 1st July 2000, and  I was managing my ancestral home situated in a busy locality of eastern Bangalore.   I was planning to implement fifty service projects during the Rotary year 2000-1 as I was turning fifty. But, typically it is also an age when the metabolic rate[1] starts slowing down. Hence, with the ushering of new millennium, ...

  Money alone does little good.  Individual service is helpless without money.  The two together can be God-sent to civilization.  Arch Klump (1869-1951), Past R.I. President Though I had joined Rotary in the year 1988, I started doing some community service seriously only from 1997. I received a call during the first week of July 1997 from then incoming club president, requesting me to be the Director for Community Service, just a couple of days before the Installation function during which the President and Board of Directors get installed formally to manage the new Rotary year. The member who was supposed to take up that position, a medical professional, had to leave for U.K and Canada for a long-term training programme. Thus, filling up the vacancy of Community Service director during the Rotary year 1997-8 became a turning point in my Rotary journey. In the same Rotary year, by a strange coincidence, Dr. Gabriel Minder, a Swiss national, who had become a charter...