AFVOA Newletters of Year 2011

Page 4 of 44 of some of our good countrymen to take public money in huge quantities and stuff them into their various bank accounts. The bank managers in return enter eight figure numbers in their pass books. How the sight of these numbers can give them happiness is a bit difficult to be understood by people like us with ultra slim pass books. There always comes a time when Indian bankers refuse to take any more money. At that stage the scamster (this must be a new India-specific word since my computer is underlining it in red) proceeds to stuff his Swiss bank account and accounts in some distant place called Lichtenstein with our money. Why he does it is hard to comprehend. There is a feeling in Tamil Nadu that a successful person is one who leaves behind enough earthly wealth so that seven generations following him can ‘sit and eat’, that is to say, live without working. This philosophy of life, though deep rooted, ignores a basic fact that no one is grateful to his benefactor. We are seeing this in every day life. When a man leaves his house to his son he may be sure that his portrait will be hung on the wall when his obsequies are over. At the same time he should also be certain that it will not be rehung on the wall when the house is white washed. That is life. It is doubtless that future financial beneficiaries will never talk well of their benefactors. That being so why our leading lights take the money meant for our schools, roads, bridges and industries and give them to Swiss bankers is a question one finds difficult to answer. Be that as it may, we veterans can be proud and happy about one thing. And that is that in our service days there were not so much ‘scammiing’. Some scams must have been there but they surely were not of the magnitude seen today. In any case they didn’t make much news. And best of all, there were hardly any scams involving the Armed Forces. It could be that we lived in a more tolerant world when people just turned away their heads in disgust against fraudsters. Or it could be that in those days media was not so active as to expose the scams. Today TV brings sleaze in all its ugly magnificence right into our drawing rooms. Analyses of those uglinesses are available to us on our PCs, laptops and other hand held devices. When we see all that today, though some of us take up the cudgel against it, as a community we Veterans thank the creator for having let us spend our working years in more healthy environs. Let us now get to talking about ourselves. On 21 Nov we had our last BiMonthly meeting. It was an interesting meeting. In keeping with the times we played games involving cell phones organized by Ms Usha Sundar and Ms. Lalitha Mohandas. During the meeting when the Patron addressed us he made two points of great importance as far as our future is concerned. He pointed out that elections would be held in mid-2011 since the present Executive Committee would be completing their tenure and would be laying down their offices. The Patron desired that a younger team should take over so that the Association could progress with energy, dynamism, drive, vitality and vigour. At the same time he reminded us that our Association is an inter- services organization. In keeping with that reality the next set of office bearers should be from the Navy and the Air Force. Let us make his desires fructify. The next BiMonthly Meeting of our Association will be our Annual Picnic on 09 Jan 2011. The venue, as in the years past will be Camp Gloria on the East Coast Road. Camp Gloria is in Nemmeli Village, 3km away from the Crocodile Bank,