email from Karals

To all batchmates
At the outset, this is response from a non-participant to the recent batch-get-together activities,who has no excuses to offer.
Initially, the responsefrom the Department of Physiology was touching,sincere-a genuineexpression of gratitude, most deserving for an exemplary act of concern forthe needs of the present and future medical students at the institution which nurtured us and released us to the world of professionalism to enable us to water, feed and shelter ourselves and our loved ones. I cannot recall a similar gesture by any batch from Colombo,during the past fifty years.
Without any reservations, I salute those who thought of such a noble gesture re educational facilites, who collected the information re the precise needs,prioritized, proceeded to collect the funds and deliver without the usual 'magul bera' and 'pandals'.
Re the re-union at Habarana, having briefly attended one meeting at Kandy, I am aware of the enthusiasm and the detailed and affectionate manner in which planning for travel, accomodation, festivities and frivolities were made by several individuals, which also included a considerable degree of travel. This I considered was selfless devotion to a task-to regather, reevisit thepast, reminisce and rejopice, which, as to be expected was memorable and enjoyed by all.
Late Ajith Samaranayake wrote " In the lexicon of some Sinhala literary critics who know a little of post-modernism, nostalgia isa dirty word. It is regressive and retrograde and smacks of a futile attempt to return to the past. However, in a darkening and confusing time when so many certainties are crumbling, nostalgia may be the only way to keep sane.-Modified- nostalgia for one's medical school days is a pareticulalrly powerful emotion for it embodies a care-free life-they were the days before one's own eyes were uncomfotable opened to the sordid realities of life"
To all of you , who made all factes of thisre-union a memorable and resounding success-Thank You-for it made me proud to have been a batchmate of you all. Philip, your descriptione of the tributes to those who are no longer with us, made me silently pray that their journeys through samsara be short. Karals