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MESSAGE FOR AUGUST ‘05

CONNECTIONS AND CONTINUITY

It is obvious that one can perhaps buy a future, or at least hopefully, invest in one but the past is beyond intervention or investment – it is what it is!

In that sense, our provenance of various forms of lineage, is to be cherished and celebrated, as it has both a connectivity to our origins, and happily, a continuity with our present pre-occupations.

August is a month of celebrations for Masons of this District, for it is the month in which the City itself celebrates its founding – 366 years ago, and in a major part of which, of close to 300 years, Masonry has shared its history, and contributed through its Brethren to the City’s growth and well-being. Another festive occasion is our Half-Yearly Meeting, this time in Ootacamund in the luscious Nilgiri Hills, with Lodge Faith, Hope and Charity as our hosts – the town in itself being the repository of a long-standing connection with Freemasonry, and indeed even with the City of Madras, as its summer hideaway, and for some time, even its seat of temporarily transferred governance.

Ootacamund grew from being a ‘Hospital’ station where the war- wounded were restored to health, a Boer P.O.W. camp, to a seat of temporary governance of the Madras Presidency during the torrid summer months affecting the City of Madras, and finally to the resort it is now, surrounded by its Plantations, Hill sides and Forests.

Masonry has co-existed in these parts with the social and economic development of the intervening three centuries and more, and indeed a book on Ootacamund originally issued in 1908 and re-issued in 2002, has a whole chapter on Freemasonry in Ooty.

The fact that we still have two strong Lodges in Ooty speaks for the robust links which continue to exist between Freemasonry and the local gentry, and two lovely and quaint Lodge buildings independently and respectively owned by these Lodges for their Meetings and festive boards.

Long may our past connections seamlessly flow into the future, adjusting to the changes in the environment, and providing a continuity of service to society, as we have done in centuries past.