AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 118 of 237 15 Raised a Toast, Finally Wg Cdr C Ravishankar Genre: Life in the Forces s there such a thing called “Incorruptible”? Or, is “Incorruptible” just a theoretical probability? As it turned out, it was both in my case! While one part of the Military is all too glamorous, an ill-informed civilian perception based on our relative ease of access to liquor unfairly associates military men with all vices under the Sun. In one of our college Alumni meets after my commissioning into the Air Force, I was shocked to hear a perception from a group of professionally qualified class fellows that all military men to be carnivores, washing down their daily diet with neat, free issue XXX Rum. As a native of Tamil Nadu State, I could never fathom the etymology as to how the opposite of ‘Vegetarian Hotel’ became ‘Military Hotel’! Leaving the dietary preferences aside, the most circulated internet humour on the services - ‘the vice of the Vice Admiral is the rear of the Rear Admiral’ did not help our cause either. When all of us within the forces laughed it off as a mere wordplay, I was aghast when in a social gathering, I