A Drop Of Life

Moved by the plight of undernourished newborns, she spared no effort to give them a chance at life

- Chaitali Patel

It was 2019 when 40-year-old Vichitra Senthil Kumar began to feel a sense of restlessness, an absence she could not quite name. Life in Tiruppur with her husband and teenage son was generally content. She worked at her husband’s plastic recycling business, looking after buyer communications and accounts, earning well and without complaints, but still grappled with dissatisfaction. “I constantly had a sense that something was lacking,” recounts Kumar, who was a former school and college football player, and skilled enough to be chosen to play at the national level when marriage and family interrupted that path.

But a turning point came when she joined the Rotary Club in 2019 at her maternal uncle’s behest. Every day, Kumar would finish work and attend a variety of Rotary social work programmes. “My husband noticed that when I go out to help others I came back happy and cheerful. He suggested that maybe this was my calling,” she recalls. Kumar took to community outreach like a fish to water and her enthusiastic efforts led to her being elected President of her club in 2021.