One musical genius who was our best friend I knew Nihal at college and Periya kovil because he was an altar boy but it was in UK I became one of his friends (thamby). Nihal organised many self sponsored talent shows at big venues such as Wimbledon town hall in UK. He did this specially for our Tamil community for young and not so young for the LOVE & PASSION he had for MUSIC. You could see one of the advertisements in the attached magazine links published in 1989/91. I attended one of his talent contests shows in 1988. It was there I had a chat with Nihal and came up with the idea of a dinner/dance among Old Pats. The hard work put forward by handful of Old Pats resulted in the first ever dinner dance held in May 1989 at Wimbledon town hall with Rev Fr A E Bernard as chief guest. Rev Fr Rajan attended too. It was Nihal who booked the Wimbledon town hall for us. We aimed for March but it happened in May 1989. Then in 1991, Nihal organised the second dinner dance at Wandsworth town hall. It was at this show some members called to revive the SPC UKOBA which took place later in the same year. Rest is history. It took almost thirty years to honour Nihal but as they say better late than never. Like Deva Rajasooriar mentioned, I have personally witnessed Nihal’s sons dropping off the sound equipment for OBA functions then coming back after the shows to pick them up with Nihal’s wife helping to load/unload. So it is not just Nihal but the whole family were involved. This showed the dedication he had for his Alma mater. He never hesitated to say NO if one asked for any help which particularly involved music. We met again in 2004 in Isle of Wight for the global re-union. Around this time he had eye sight health issues but this didn’t stop his love for music. At this stage, he switched from playing guitar to keyboard. He performed as one man band and as part of the group in many functions such as weddings, birthday parties, OBA/OGA functions, kool parties organised by youngsters and various other functions. One thing I admired most was he would travel by public transport with his stick used by the visually impaired to different parts of England & Wales to buy suitable second hand musical keyboards which kept himself being very busy. He joined us on trips abroad. More than that as the attached pics shows he always joined in when some of us here in UK had the odd catch up at restaurants like ‘Suvai Aruvi/Rising Sun/Meeting Palace’. Apart from Nihal the rest were always his younger bro Niranjan’s batchmates. Nihal was the first to bring a famous artist from Colombo to perform at the Jaffna open air theatre back in the late 60s. Yes, he brought the Baila King M S Fernando to Jaffna. It is an interesting and kind of laughable story behind how he managed (financed) to do it. He organised a successful show in aid of our periya kovil St Mary’s Cathedral building fund. This was when his classmate Rev Fr Sahanayagam was the parish priest. Nihal helped the Jaffna pop group fame 'Beatniks' to re-unite in UK. Band members late Thirukumar of Germany and Dolly & Saba from Norway arrived along with Manoaharaseelan of UK they all stayed at Nihal's house few days practising/preparing and performed at one of the OBA functions which took place at Acton town hall. This is one of the occasion he sang his favourite composition of Carmel rd/Main rd junction hit. Nihal was fun to be around with. He was energetic, quick-witted and hard working. He was a very gentle, kind and a family person with full of wits. It is hard to believe that he is no more. As one of the texts I received which said, 'Alex, what to do so sad, sadly we all have an end date'. May his soul rest in peace.