National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

One of my specializations is bank and credit card reconciliation, month-end, quarter-end and year-end reconciliation. That is not what this is about.

I marked the day with silence. And some more silence. The silence provoked introspection: what have I done for the lost children and survivors of residential schools? I have supported indigenous vendors, I have supported indigenous artists, I have also hobnobbed with First Nations Chiefs. That has not resulted in reconciliation, true though it is.

When a mother loses a child, there is pain: irreparable, immense pain. When a community loses not one child, but many, that pain is spread far and wide. It cannot be erased. It must be healed. For that is the resolution for pain. How each survivor or each parent and community that has missing children deals with their pain is unique to themselves, for we are all different people, and we handle what life gives us in our own ways. For we are all survivors. Maybe we did not go through the residential school system, but that crisis has now caused us to reflect on our behaviors, our grief and our support to the communities not only in Kamloops and Cranbrook and Saskatchewan, but everywhere.

You were really great, Papa! Happy Father's Day!

My father would have been one hundred and three years old today. He would have taught my children, all that he taught me. The values, the generosity, the leadership skills, and intrinsic appreciation of the goodness of humanity.

I remember him for his laughter, his sense of humor that caught you off-guard. I remember the rides to school in the morning when he had stories to tell me. I remember when he helped me with my school projects, the large cardboard charts that were decorated with serrated colored paper stripes on the edges. His calligraphy was perfect. I learned from him that Mahatma Gandhi, respectfully hailed by Indians as the Father of the Nation, was ambidextrous: in prison, when his right hand was fatigued with continuous writing, he trained his left hand to write and takeover the letter writing and books that perforce were written by hand.

So now, all I can say is, “You were really great, Papa, Rotarian Past District Governor D. m. Desai! You gave your life to Rotary International … and taught me the Four-Way Test.”

Happy Pride Month 2021

As the world, as though from a long snooze, awakens post-pandemic, we find that there are occasions to celebrate. We join others in celebration of Pride month.