AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 150 of 332  The AFVOA, formed towards the end of the 20 th century in Chennai, had faithfully adopted the lofty ideals of the Armed Forces and went all out to promote camaraderie among its members. The pioneer members of the AFVOA had truly realized the value of regular communication among members and had instituted several measures in that direction.  The dawn of 21 st century witnessed the launch of their internal Newsletters. Not only did they compile them with utmost care and dedication, but also printed and dispatched to all members by snail mail, in addition to electronic mail.  Between the year 2000 and 2014, 80 such Newsletters were published. After a break of 6 long years, the incumbent Managing Committee took it upon itself to resume publication of the Newsletters. The new avatar of the Newsletters took the form of eBooks and were available to browse through AFVOA’s website. Four Newsletters had been published between May 2020 and Apr 2021.  The positive response from the members was unimaginably high. Members vied with each other to contribute their experiences for publishing in the Newsletter.  This is not all. With help from pioneer members, the Managing Committee had also digitized 72 of the 80 old hard copy Newsletters published between the year 2000 and 2014. These were also made available for electronic access through their website. The Committee was endeavoring to lay their hands on the missing 8 old Newsletters and had plans to complete the task soonest.  The hard copies of all the digitized Newsletters that the Managing Committee had arranged for safe keeping for posterity are the ones that were found inside the Time Capsule!  Newsletters are not all. The inhabitants of the Planet Earth were also faced the risk of contacting a serious virus infection, at times leading to death, the fear of which had forced them indoors. Inconceivable for us, but it was reality then. They called the forced restriction to stay indoors ‘lockdown’. This irrepressible group called AFVOA had found a solution to keep their members gainfully engaged even during such ‘lockdowns’ by organizing virtual meetings through a medium called ‘eConnect’. Our Data Scientists are unable to crack how they did it but their Newsletters, particularly the