Dearest friends,
True friendship is something that can never be sort, acquired or commanded. Rather, it is something that happens almost in passing… scarcely acknowledged when it is in seed because it grows by being watered, fertilized and nurtured by millions of tiny thoughts, words, gestures and acts that we visit upon each other in our individual and social lives. Most of these bonds of conviviality and trust become blended into our souls during our formative years when we are mere knock-kneed tykes barreling across a schoolyard, tumbling on a playground, sneaking a note in a classroom or skewering a teacher in a common.
Those days pass by with hardly a mention and we move into our adult lives and their toils and alarms, mostly forgetting the mini-loves and micro-battles of our school days. When we do spare a moment for those times, it is with an all too brief recall that flits for the briefest of moments across the transom of our minds, the thoughts fading almost as they are born.
But then, as we grow older, we turn more and more towards those early days, to simpler times, to fonder memories. But where then are those who held us high and kept us going? Where are they with whom we engaged at levels of subtlety and personality that can never be given justice off a casual social media post or a vague “hi how are you? I’m fine thank you”?
Would it not be wonderful, we have oft thought, if we could sit down together and revisit, recalibrate and rejoice in all those things, big and small, that formed our lives in a small piece of southern geography in Sri Lanka? Would it not be a gorgeous foundation for the rest of our lives if we could help each other to even greater heights than those we have already scaled? Would it not be a quiet satisfaction if we had a trusting and trusted group where one works for all and all works for one with no thought of self-servitude, ego-massage or one-upmanship? Would it not be a fulfilling sign-off to our childhood and youth if we could take those friendships from their seedlings of yore into one behemoth of a tree of networked solidarity, rooted in our six schools with its branches straddling the whole world?
The Galle Club makes that dream possible my friends.
- Nilmini