Cop turns his composition into video album featuring colleagues

The Hindu

6 hours ago

Humming tunes come naturally to A. Ajithdev, 49, an assistant sub-inspector attached to the Nemom police station in Thiruvananthapuram.
And often, those tunes are his own. Mr. Ajithdev, a former student of Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, has turned one such tune that came to him three years ago into a video album featuring his colleagues from the force. The album has made its way to YouTube and is now doing the rounds of police WhatsApp groups.
Binoop S., a civil police officer and Mr. Ajithdev's colleague at the Nemom station, and Saboora B., attached to the Malappuram District Police Headquarters, starred in the album, which was shot over two days in Ponmudi. Mr. Ajithdev also wrote the lyrics and filmed the album. William Isaac, of Asianet Star Singer fame, rendered the song, which narrates a cop's love affair with a senior officer.
'I had almost forgotten the song until Binoop joined me at the station. That is when I decided to dust it off and turn it into a video album,' said Mr. Ajithdev. While it was Binoop's first acting assignment, Saboora was already active on social media, regularly posting videos.
The tunes often come to him while travelling, one of his passions. He records them immediately on his mobile phone, only to forget about them as the pressures of duty sucks him up. Later, when he comes across those recordings, he sits down to write the lyrics. Since joining the force 23 years ago, Ajithdev has composed and penned around 10 such songs.
'Those songs, which were mostly created for office purposes, were always appreciated by colleagues. That was when I thought of taking them to a wider audience,' said Mr. Ajithdev, who holds a postgraduate diploma in Journalism from the Kerala Press Academy, now renamed the Kerala Media Academy.
Though not formally trained, his love for music comes from his father, Ashokan A., a dyed-in-the-wool communist who used to write songs for the party. Mr. Ajithdev recalls singing one of his father's songs with his brother at the CPI(M)'s 13th Party Congress at Shankhumukham beach in Thiruvananthapuram in the late 1980s. 'So, the influence was always there. Probably, it took me longer to realise it,' said Mr. Ajithdev.