AFVOA Newsletter 03 of 2020

Section 2 – News / Updates from the Association CV 2 No. 03 / 2020 Page 18 of 167 much out of the world that poor Ravishankar had to steal a caption from the Bard and struggle for words to describe the event! If I had not read his account carefully, I would have mistaken Ajwain Dabba as another sibling of Punjabi Dhaba! The sole authority on the cultural and historical heritage of Chennai (Madras) and the city’s dark shades of corruption and patronage during the days of the East India Company is V. Sriram whose well documented portrayal make the Chennaites both proud and ashamed at the same time. Think of it, the seeds of the renowned Yale University were gathered in Chennai by Elihu Yale indulging in every corrupt practice and vice. Probably, there was no shortage of crooks in England then for the East India Company to hire them en masse. Prof. Ganapathy, acclaimed as the father of telemedicine in India, has in depth knowledge of every aspect of space research. His presentation gave a clear insight of manned space mission by ISRO in the near future. For all our Vedic knowledge of cosmos and exploratory astronomy, foreign domination for many centuries had put a lid on our scientific growth. It is during the last two decades, India has taken gigantic strides in space research thanks to ISRO. By the way, Ravishankar’s graduation is no more in doubt when he proposes a toast to Prof. Ganapathy! Unlike Jeanne Baret, the first woman circumnavigator of the world, Meenakshi Arvind did not have to disguise herself as a man for her adventurous drives around the world. She demonstrated the significance of meticulous planning and material and mental preparation for riding a car through the autobahns of multiple countries with different cultures, history, languages and rules. In the USA, it is not my way or your way, but highways - a network initiated during Eisenhower presidency. To minimize the impact on population in the event of a nuclear war with USSR, the highway network was evolved to disperse the population away from the cities, and the culture of driving long distances to work began in the fifties. Now with the threat of Corona, a new culture of no driving to work (or no work!) is emerging all over the world. No less adventurous is Rathika Ramasami whose choice of wildlife photography as her profession where even men do not dare is astounding. In the Navy, the dictum is simple. Anything moving salute and anything still paint! Rathika, on the other hand, extracts an amazing still (picture) from speeding wildlife and generates a moving picture from static animals! Sudha Raghunathan has no equal in the field of Carnatic Music. Unlike the conservative era of classical music some eighty years ago, musicians of today appreciate different forms of music and actively collaborate to delight music lovers. As Ravishankar has covered the event so extensively, I confine myself to some new information. GNB, the guru of MLV who is the guru of Sudha was a graduate in mathematics which was a rarity in those days. Vyasatirtha, a sage of Madhwa School of philosophy and the composer of