A group of professionals from Mumbai, India, visited Emporia last week as part of a 30-day cultural and educational Group Study Exchange sponsored through Rotary International.
Jack Havenhill of Sunrise Rotary Club, co-chairman of arrangements for the inbound exchange, said that a group of Americans already had spent January in India.
Havenhill said that both groups were led by Rotary members, though the remainder of the participants were required to be non-Rotary professionals.
“Now, we would hope that they would have such a good opinion of Rotary when they go back to their country, they would become Rotarians,” he said.
The group split up to tour sites involved in their special interests: emergency medicine at the Emporia Fire Department, Newman Regional Health, Emporia State University, Evco, Glendo and the Flint Hills Technical College.
Hi-Noon Rotarian and Emporia tour coordinator Ken Buchele and his wife, Marilyn, were hosts Friday evening for an ice cream social for the group from India and members of Emporia’s Rotary clubs. On Saturday, the guests were taken to Hutchinson to visit the Cosmosphere before leaving Sunday morning for their next stop, Manhattan.
Sudeep Basu, Charter President of his Rotary club in Mumbai, led the group on a tour that also included visits in Kansas City, Osawatomie, Gardner, Lawrence, and Topeka. Basu is chief executive officer of Wuerth Co., a company that deals in automotive goods and engineering. He also is a Paul Harris Fellow and teaches meditation and yoga
Dharmendra “D.G.” Gangrade is with Reliance, a company described as “the Wal-Mart of India.”
As Gangrade waited for the rest of the group to gather Friday afternoon, he said that the people of Kansas remind him of those in his home country; both are warm and loving.
He’d just been handed a box to give to Basu, who had lost his camera in Lawrence. Basu’s host family there had shipped a loaner camera overnight so he could continue photographing the trip.
“This is the hospitality of Kansas,” Gangrade said.
Jewelry designer Himja Parekh agreed with his remarks and illustrated them with an anecdote of her own. The five came to Kansas with lightweight clothing, prepared for warm spring weather. When unseasonal snow and frigid temperatures surprised everyone, a host solved the problem.
“She just opened her closet and said, ‘Take what you want,” Parekh said. “It was incredible.”
Parekh also works with an Israeli jewel firm that deals internationally and is administrator of a trust her family has set up for needy people in her home city, which was known as Bombay.
Arun Shankar said he had been somewhat uncomfortable with the lack of crowds. Mumbai has about 17 million people; Emporia has about 28,000.
“We come from a place where we bump into people,” Shankar said.
Shankar specializes in and teaches hospitality management. He catered dinner for Jimmy Carter and delegation when they visited recently in Mumbai.
After touring Newman Regional Health and visiting with dieticians, Shankar was impressed with the hospital in general and the focus on nutrition in particular.
“For me, I was most amazed by the attitude of the people,” he said. In India, hospitals are well-staffed and the doctors are excellent, he said, but they could take care to another level.
“They run (Newman) with an attitude of providing customer care,” Shankar said. “That’s what we need back in India.”
The Kansans have kept their guests too busy to be homesick, except during the nighttime quiet when, Roopali Deshpande said, she has time to think about her 7-year-old daughter.
“The program is so tight and so scheduled, there is no time to miss my little sweetheart,” she said.
Deshpande, a professor who holds a doctorate in economics, chose ESU as one of her stops, and sat in on a class before talking with university officials.
She also will perform traditional Indian dances on her next stops in Manhattan, Topeka, and Kansas City.
Hosts for individuals in the group were Jack and Ann Havenhill and Mike and Sandy Helbert, representing Sunrise Rotary, and John Korsak, Jim and Kathy Kessler and Eugene and Jean DeDonder, representing Hi-Noon Rotary.