Thanks for your interest, Margarida.
You can pick up a form from Tina Cordeiro [9850144178] who lives very close to the Saligao Institute. Get two current members to propose you (quite a few members are from Donvaddo too), and submit it to the committee.
The current Life Membership fee is Rs 5000. Which is great value for money provided we and the upcoming generations keep the SI institution active, useful and a place through which to build social capital for the village and beyond. Ideally minus the bitterness and infighting which sometimes does creep into good initiatives too, given that human nature is what it is.
I cut on a couple of hours of sleep and went last Sunday morning to the Club, out of curiosity, for the annual meeting. Though I might get something to report on for Saligao-Net. Before I realised it, I got caught up on the committee! Later, as we were leaving, Dayanita Singh, the ace photographer who's based in D'Mello Vaddo when not travelling, had a good laugh over how quickly and surprisingly everything turned out!
But I have simply too many memories of the vibrant, active Saligao Institute of the 1970s and 1980s, when the simple, round, wooden reading table acted as our window to the outside world in those disconnected times. Even though it got just one newspaper each from Panjim and Bombay, and a monthly magazine from Delhi, and the occasional TIME magazine.
I was useless at sports, but there was a lot of that happening too for those who wanted it -- carom, badminton, table-tennis, Bridge, whist-drives, tombola, even the simple-but-fun village game called lobbiani (seven tiles). The Saligaokars in Bombay had donated what must have been the best village library for many scores of miles around, and it was open every Saturday evening. We ran there during the narrow window of two hours we got, but it was a great place to get one's ideas from. I remember the drawing contents, the debates and quizzes. Even adults took part in these to a full house (remember the debate on 'Prohibition is the Solution to all our Ills' in the Morarji Dessai times? ... no prizes for guessing which side won!).
Of course, much depends on how active we all could keep this institution. I for one (it's my personal opinion) do not believe that it is only for the managing committee to conceive, undertake and implement all its activities. Suggestions should come from members, specially those willing to implement initiatives on their own, without any problems or losses to the institution, while leaving behind some benefit for the place.
When we prepare the balance sheets of not-for-profit institutions, we also need to calculate the people we build up, the skills generated, the lasting social and intellectual capital that each action and activity creates. If you are one of the villagers willing to support such activities, your ideas and initiatives would be most welcome. FN