AFVOA Newsletter 03 of 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 03 / 2020 Page 80 of 167 1967. Lyrically, "Summer Wine" describes a man, voiced by Hazlewood, who meets a woman, Nancy Sinatra, who notices his silver spurs and invites him to have wine with her. After heavy drinking, the man awakens hung over to find his spurs missing, and realises that the mysterious woman has stolen his money. Smt Lalitha Mohandas and her brother Cdr NR Ravi sang the number, whilst strumming the guitar. Lalitha Mohandas comes from a Service background. Her father was in the Air Force, whereas her brother joined the Navy. Her husband also served in the Air Force. Both her parents were immersed in classical carnatic music and hence it was no surprise that both the children had music in their blood. Lalitha is blessed with a husky voice, which helps her to render songs of Usha Uthup with great facility. She has participated in innumerable Services programmes, not only as a participant but also as a judge. During the time that Mohandas was in service, she was popularly known as the Usha Uthup of the Air Force. A word about Cdr Ravi. Capt (IN) Ravi is the elder brother of Lalitha. Though steeped in Carnatic classical music, he was keen to do something different. Hence he turned his attention to the guitar and attained a fair degree of proficiency in playing the same. From 1967, we switched to 2005, and listened to the song “Piyu Bole” from the Hindi film Parineeta. The film was a musical adaptation of the 191 4 Bengali n ovella, Parineeta by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Sqn Ldr Unni and Kumari Shrestha (grand daughter of Col SR Raju) rendered the song, which was reminiscent of the film itself where Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal had rendered the original. Shrestha is the grand daughter of Col Raju, who is presently the Warden of the Youth Hostel. Shrestha was constantly encouraged by her mother Prasanna and her grand parents in her attempts to learn music. The audience realised that she had attained a fair degree of success in her attempts at being musical. From Hindi we moved southward. Col Ganesh Kumar – a new entrant to the AFVOA, made us proud by singing a Malayalam song – “Alliambal” which was a super hit song, sung by the evergreen baritone voice of Yesudas. Ganesh Kumar graduated in Engineering from the Government Engineering College, Trivandrum. Being very much interested in music, he underwent special training in classical carnatic music from the well-known Guru Chethala Gopalan Nair. Thereafter both in school and college he was a permanent fixture of cultural events. He worked for the Kerala Government for a short while before being commissioned into the EME. While in service he continued his musical moments enthralling the services crowds wherever he served. His wife is an accomplished veena artist, while his daughter is a