Finally the day arrived! We went at 10am to the venue all excited and nervous. The 

nervousness soon became a thing of the past, as we saw the arrangements made

by the organizing committee. Red carpet welcome was there for the guests and

beautiful girls were standing on the gate to shower flowers on them! The guests

were supposed to come from 12pm and the inaugural function was going
to start at 5pm.

If the inaugural function was anything to go by we were in for the
most memorable 4 days of our lives! Everybody went inside the Paul Harris hall for the inaugural
function. The front row seats were reserved for the media persons.
After that you could easily figure out where all the Bangladeshi’s or Pakistani’s or
Lankan’s were sitting. People belonging to the same country were sitting together in
a group. There were also two noticeable groups in Mumbai and Pune. God knows why but they
were busy in trying to outclass each other by shouting their
respective slogans as loud as possible.

Everyone stood up as the national anthem of Sri-Lanka started to play. After that the national anthems of Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan were played. Just after Pakistan’s national anthem, India’s national anthem started. I too started to sing with the crowd. Words are not enough to describe how I felt during that minute or so! The feeling of being an Indian, the feeling of representing the country, the feeling of doing something for the country was all over me. With all those feelings it was a hard thing for my body to behave normally. I got goose bumps and my eyes became moist! This was one of my best moments of Rotasia 2010!

District march was held after the inaugural function. District members
followed the DRR (District Rotaract Representative) in a queue with their banners.
DRR’s of each district gave their district presentation.
DJ night was organized after the district presentation. It was real
fun. Everybody danced like crazy and had a ball! People from different countries had
put on different dancing shoes! While the Lankans were going berserk and dancing like no one’s
watching; the people from Nepal were shy and danced like every eyeball
was staring at them!

Mr. and Ms. Rotasia competition was organized during the event. Subramaniam
Sudakaranan from Sri-Lanka won the Mr. Rotasia title and Neelima Raut
from Nepal bagged the Ms. Rotasia title. Neelima’s story was extraordinary. She
told that when she was born, her grandfather forced her mother to leave the house just because
she was a girl and her grandfather wanted a boy. Her journey is truly amazing.
Coming from that narrow-minded community who didn’t allow girls to do anything
other than the household work; to come here and represent her country
was a great achievement!

Rotasia was a great mix of education and entertainment. While rock
show, air show and cultural nights were entertaining everybody; programs like art of
living, yoga sessions and lectures of well known speakers were taking care of the
educational part.
On the last day, one could still see people sitting in groups. But
this time around the groups were not country based. This time people from different
countries were sitting in one group! Rather than shouting their respective slogans,
people shouted each other’s slogans. That was amazing to see. The feeling of being
one had arrived in ROTASIA and before we could realize Rotasia 2010 had already achieved its
purpose!

Forgot to mention one thing; after the event most people told us that,
the food they had was great and they found it to be better than that of the previous
Rotasia’s which they had attended. At the time of leaving they shouted “FOOD COMMITTEE
ROCKS!” And I once again got goose bumps and moist eyes! (I really
can’t help it).