In the Part I we agreed that the Army personnel are as nice, as professional and as normal as any of us in the Navy. The one thing different or peculiar about them is the penchant to use abbreviations and acronyms in their writing.
Then there is another very peculiar thing about the army. To understand this, one has to recall ‘A Psalm of Life’ by a certain bloke called Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. HWL in this poem exhorts us to make our lives sublime. “And, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.”
Army is convinced that spending as much time as possible with the sand shall make the lives of its personnel sublime. Hence, Army has conceived something called Sand Model and seemingly nice, professional and normal people spend quality time around it as one does around a bonfire during the North Indian festival of Lohri. There is not too much difference between Lohri and Sand Model discussions. During the former, many people sing and dance around the fire. During SMD, ditto. Perhaps the only difference is that the Lohri bonfire burns itself out in an evening; whereas, the SMD can go on and on like Tennyson’s Brook. The Army takes its poems very seriously.
I had earlier seen Sand Model discussions during the Staff Course at Wellington; and I thought I had seen it all. None of those had prepared me for SMDs at Higher Command Course in Mhow. As soon as I saw the first Sand Model in Mhow, with my PCK (Pre Course Knowledge) acquired during DSSC, I felt that on the outside chance of prolonging discussions; they may be able to carry on for about 2 – 3 hours. Little did I know that spending a week discussing the course of battle over a sand model is for them as easy as Geoff Boycott playing an entire session during a cricket test match without scoring a run. Sand Model discussions, in Mhow, are not controlled by sand glass shaped for an hour. They wet the sand and make the hour glass dispense it very slowly until it is totally poured out into the lower half in about a week’s time. On the last day, the DS wraps up the discussions by saying that certain aspects could not be discussed properly “due to paucity of time”.
Generally the area is about 50 miles by 50 miles. But, when navy officers goad them to be strategic in their outlook, they increase it to 100 by 100 miles.
The main thing of interest in a Sand Model is an arrow pointing North. Hours into the discussions, the naval officers will still be trying to sort out this all important question: Where are we? On ships, on a radar screen, they know for sure they are at the centre. But, in a sand model, you could be anywhere.
Another thing that I have discovered in SMDs is that an attack can take place from any direction. It is like the discussions on enemy courses of action in an appreciation; Course B is the most likely but A and C also can’t be ruled out. So, if two days of discussions have taken place on enemy attack from North, West and South West and you have observed a vast expense of land between South and South West over which no discussions have taken place, sooner or later some smart aleck would point out that though difficult because of the riverine area, just as it happened in 1943 in Southern France or some other unheard of country, the enemy might choose a feint from West or North and the main attack might just come from that area in the South and South West.
Great professionals who had immersed deep into their seats after saying their bit in the first two days are jolted into sitting straight in their seats with this “unexpected turn of events”. Suddenly, they look at the smart aleck as Mister Wilson used to look at Dennis and wish he would be elsewhere. However, the smart aleck, not unlike Dennis has done his innocent (?) Boy Scout act and is ostensibly oblivious of the fact that another two days of discussions would ensue due to this ‘unexpected’ development.
The staff is busy moving those curious placards indicating battalions and independent companies etc; more such words of “accretions”, “ab-initio”, “advance”, “axis”, “regroup” etc are heard.
I have often thought what would be the naval equivalent of SMDs in Naval Higher Command courses? I couldn’t come anywhere close to these. We have to, perforce, doff our caps at the Army officers for having come out with something that is so unique that there is nothing anywhere close to it that the navy has.
Sand Model Discussions are something where from the sand will never totally run out; at least for the Army.
When I was in school, we used to have any number of these small books available helping us to pass our exams without – what they promised – tears or too much of effort. These were named, just like For Dummies series, English Without Tears, Maths Without Tears and so on.
I present you here, based on my extensive observations, Annual Inspection Without Tears.
Annual Inspection of a ship is to the ship’s company (crew) what ACR is to an individual (Please also read ACR Season). It is normally divided into three parts: Harbour Inspection in which over days the Fleet Staff Officers check their respective departments for maintenance of equipment, books, drills etc; Divisions and Rounds in which the Fleet Commander checks the ship’s company for the turnout and compartments for their cleanliness and upkeep; and finally Sea Inspection for the readiness of the ship’s departments for combat.
The preparation starts as early as a month or two before. Generally, the Fleet publishes a calendar of annual inspections of ships. However, bright, upcoming COs, in case they find out that their ships are not scheduled for inspection, call on the Fleet Commander and convince him to inspect their ships. When the Fleet Commander accepts, they return to their ships, call their Heads of Departments and address them in this manner, “I don’t know what’s wrong with the Fleet Commander. I told him that we were inspected by the last Fleet Commander less than 6 months before. However, he insisted on inspecting us next month before I finally hand over command. Anyway, gentlemen, despite my best efforts to wriggle out of it, it has become a fait accompli. Fortunately, I have the best team of HODs in the Fleet and you would hold my hand, I am sure.”
And then start the frantic preparations. The Fleet Commanders generally pass instructions that no fresh paint is to be applied unless necessary. Fortunately, bright and upcoming COs having bright and upcoming XOs (Executive Officers or Second-in-Command) do find that almost the entire ship’s painting is necessary. Their reasoning goes like this that if a ship just before decommissioning can be painted, what is wrong with painting before something as important as Annual Inspection?
What should be the focus of the other preparation? Well, I can think of many significant things.
One of the most significant is to follow Sun Tzu’s advice in Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Now, you are likely to tell me that there is no war going on and there is no enemy and hence Sun Tzu is not applicable; it is only an annual inspection. That is where you err and the successful CO doesn’t. He replaces the word War with Annual Inspection and enemy with Fleet Commander and everything falls into place. If you know, and I mean really know your Fleet Commander, you will not fear the result of a hundred battles…er…annual inspections. Do your homework and find out what are the likes and dislikes of the Fleet Commander. Lets say, the Fleet Commander has suddenly taken fancy to fluorescent NBCD (Nuclear Biological Chemical Defence) stickers to be placed along the NBCD citadel in the ship, it should naturally become Priority #1 item. How to get these stickers in case these are not naval stores items? Ha, ha, haven’t you heard of the expression: Beg, Borrow, or Steal? In short, you have to become Bhutto, the PM of Pakistan after India demonstrated capability to explode nuclear devices; he said, “We will starve, we will live on grass; but we must have a nuclear devise ourselves”. And indeed, as history unfolded, they starved, they lived on grass, but they had nuclear bomb. With this kind of tenacity, he would have got ten out of ten in Annual Inspection.
An ad for recruitment in the Indian Navy acknowledges that “Attitude” is the most important attribute.
You have to make a list of all the Likes and Dislikes of the Fleet Commander and some of the influential members of his staff, eg, FOO or Fleet Operations Officer and ensure that you have answers to those.
The second step is to prepare an Annual Inspection Report. You should know that no one ever reads this voluminous report. Hence, do not waste your time getting all the facts right. It is not going to change anything. On the other hand, everything that the Fleet Commander and his staff ever conveyed to you, however insignificant it sounded, must be addressed in this report in bold or italics or highlighted. The expression that you should use over and over again is: As per Fleet Commander’s directions. For example: “As per Fleet Commander’s directions, the ship now has a full-fledged gym. Last two months’ data shows that officers and sailors alike use the gym regularly. A large percentage has also been visiting on Sundays and holidays. In the last PET (Physical Efficiency Test), conducted on 14 Mar 14, 85 percent of the ship’s company is now in Excellent grading”. You have given the credit to the Fleet Commander, where it is due, and you will live to see this being converted into excellent grading during the Annual Inspection.
Indeed, this report should be comprehensive enough to cover every little thing ever told to the ship by these important dignitaries. Another thing to cover in the report can be explained by me by giving you the example of Sachin Tendulakar as a batsman. He used to play psychological warfare with the bowlers and make them bowl to him the balls that he wanted. Some such thing has to be smartly done in the AI report. You have to carefully steer them in checking you for your strong points and not your week points. For example, lets say, you have recently kitted up all your sailors and spent time and energy in making sure they have all good fitting uniforms, your report must steer them into inspecting you there. If Jai and Veeru can get away with “Jail mein pistaul aa gaya hai” in Sholay, you can smartly channelise their energies into searching for the pistaul on your ship.
In harbour inspection, do not forget to prove the Admiral right; it will pay rich dividends. For example, lets say, the Fleet Commander is very fond of pulling up carpets in order to look for dust underneath; he would never pardon you for making him look idiotic by finding no dust underneath. A smart CO, therefore, makes sure that a handful of dust is inadvertently left there so that the Fleet Commander’s prepared ML (Moral Lecture) about stress on cleanship would not be wasted.
What about the Sea Inspection? Surely you cannot pull wool over anyone’s eyes there. Think again. Here, communications are the most important aspect. Irrespective of what action is taken on the drills and exercises given by the Fleet Staff, they come to know about it only through reports. You may remember this from one of John Winton books. When a Fire Drill was going on one of the ships that he had joined, nothing whatsoever was being done as far Fire Drill was concerned. However, all the reports between various positions involved with the Fire Drill were perfect. Hence, if the Captain was monitoring it on the broadcast he would have been reassured of the correctness of all the actions.
Here I cannot fail to give you two examples. One is of a hot-rod Gunnery Officer on one of the ships wherein I was posted as SCO or Signal Communication Officer. If he had ever come on board the ship on a Sunday to have beer and biriyani with his family and found that CO was also visiting with his guests, he would make a series of announcements about armament drills for the benefit of the Captain. The Captain would now get the impression that his Guns was so hard-working that even on a Sunday he was engaged with his men to improve drills.
The second example is that of a hot-rod CO of a ship of a sister ship. In exercises with aircraft, whilst own Gunnery radars were not picking up any of the incoming strikes, his ship would invariably report aircraft detected on certain range and bearing and then follow it up with all kinds of detailed reports. I too called the dockyard teams to fine-tune my own systems so that they too would pick up incoming strikes as promptly. But, it was of no avail. Finally, I had to invite the hot-rod CO for PLD (Pre Lunch Drinks) in order to learn from him the ropes. Beer loosened the tongue and he told me the truth that actually, even their systems hardly ever picked up the strikes. All that they did was to monitor the aircraft communications and as soon as the aircraft were within communication range, they would make all kinds of reports until they received a Bravo Zulu (Well Done) from the Flotilla Commander.
Alright, enough, guys. This is only a glimpse of Annual Inspection Without Tears. If you are interested, and your Annual Inspection is actually due, write to me and I shall give you more practical hints.
Before I close, I must leave you with a thought. Human-touch stories always are admired. So, if during the Admiral’s Walk Around the ship, you can have the lovely photographs of handicapped children that your ship adopted through Welfare Funds and these kids are photographed in their school receiving the prizes, you – not them – are the winner. Also, a few of quotes by important people (remember there is no one as important as the Fleet Commander) can be put in the alleyways. Admirals are adept at giving pearls of wisdom starting with the same letter; eg, Courage, Commitment, Consistency, Calm, and Clarity. His five or seven Cs, Gs, Ms or Ss – whatever letter takes his fancy – should be prominently displayed everywhere, preferably with his picture showing his own commitment.
If you ever go to Spain and want to watch the macho sports of bull-fighting, you would learn, to your surprise that bull-fighting is a carefully enacted play in three parts. In the third part, the bull hardly has any choice but to die. He knows it, the toreros know it, the matador knows it, the pincers know it and everyone in the bull-ring knows it. There are, however, some amongst the spectators who do not know it. They would do well to read Sun Tzu and The Art of War.
Sun Tzu giving the most important lesson about Annual Inspections!
ACR or Annual Confidential Report is the most important report on an officer. In the Indian Navy, depending upon one’s rank, an ACR would be due by a fixed date. The period of say a month or so leading up to this date, the actual writing of ACR by one’s IO (Initiating Officer), is called the ACR Season. There is no other season of the year like this. During Diwali season, for example, one is in festive and somewhat extravagant mood. Similarly, during Christmas season, one is in musical and forgiving mood. During ACR season, one is at one’s best behaviour. It is a period of great hope; but, it is also a period of great trepidation and anxiety. Thank God it is Annual and hence after one goes through it, one can live it up for the next one year. It is the time of the year when – in case you want to become something in the Navy – you have to put your best foot forward. You can’t hide, as you may do, say, during Holi season. You have to get noticed and noticed in a positive way. It has to be tackled at several fronts including professional, social and domestic.
During the year leading up to the ACR, you know that the Captain (in the Navy the CO of a ship is called Captain irrespective of his rank) has been happy with your performance. But, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Unless this happiness is translated into adequate PP (Promotion Potential) and PQ (Personal Qualification) marks, it is somewhat similar to ‘Jungle mein more naacha kisane dekha?’ (A peacock dancing in a forest goes unnoticed).
The Captain, therefore, has to be kept in right mood and humour until the day when he has signed the ACR, sealed and sent to the RO (Reviewing Officer). You also know that last impression is the lasting one and hence what you do in the ACR Month or Season substantially and many a times totally overshadows your performance for the rest of the year. Following measures are, therefore, only too prudent to be kept in mind:
The prudent approach during ACR Season!
There should be no attempt whatsoever to even remotely disagree or differ with the Captain professionally or socially. Lets say his favourite batsman is Kambli and you know he is in the team only because of his closeness to Sachin Tendulkar. Else, you feel he plays only for himself and lacks range of shots. But, is this the right time of the year to point out various inadequacies of this overrated batsman? For heavens’ sake NO, in capitals. This is the time to bring out what a lovely straight drive Kambli possesses and his tenacity in occupying crease for several hours – carefully omitting to add – without scoring a single run.
Similarly, why are new, shining white uniforms and peak caps lying in the wardrobe? Now is the time of the year to start wearing them. Earlier you never had time to have a proper haircut; in any case you fancied yourself looking like Amitabh Bachchan. But, for the sake of the old-fashioned Captain (who feels that an officer with a proper haircut is a smart officer), you better have a smart crew-cut.
Your Good Morning Sir also should have the requisite zing about it. You should be around to laugh the loudest when the Captain cracks those hackneyed jokes of his for the hundredth times. Your body language should exude your wholeheartedly agreeing with the fact about the Captain is the smartest and wittiest man this side of Suez.
Every opportunity should now onwards be taken to side with the Captain in any discussion. So, if he feels that RAS (Replenishment At Sea through jack-stay between two ships) is a wastage of time, you should have done your home-work to bring out how many ships in the last war, were crippled or sunk by enemy planes and other enemy action just because they were engaged in RAS. “Sitting ducks” is the expression to use with him whilst describing ships engaged in RAS.
ACR Month is also the period of the year when you must remember that Navy is not a vocation but a way of life. Hence, there is nothing like not impressing the Captain and his wife (good-lady as our army counterparts call her) during off working hours. So, when you espy them out out for a walk with their dumb looking Labrador, you and your wife should join them as almost going in the same direction. “Labs make the best pet dogs” should be your opening shot. Your wife should now chip in to say how you yourself were planning to own one as soon as you finish with the ship’s tenure. Indeed, you should add ruminatively if Lucy (Captain’s bitch) would litter, you would be the first one to take one of the pups as no one could be as adorable as Lucy.
Somehow, the Captain also has to know about your other hidden talents. These would tip the scale in your favour considering that sometimes, to decide the selected candidates in the Promotion Board, the board has been known to go down to the second decimal points of PP plus PQ marks of almost similarly qualified officers.
In this your wife’s utterances come in handy: “Vijay is (fictitious name; no need to take offence in case your or your husband’s name is Vijay in the same manner some of you took offence to mention of Pahargunj in my story Raksha. For heavens’ sake, these are just names) very fond of painting. Coincidentally, his favourite subject is dogs. In our home place Dehradun, his paintings sell like hot cakes”.
And you add with a twinkle in your eyes: “Hot dogs, that is”. There isn’t a Captain worth his salt who doesn’t appreciate humour.
You should also be alive to slipping in your other interests. “Rekha is nowhere near the truth, Sir; I hardly get time to paint these days. One comes home quite late from the ship. Irrespective of howsoever late it may be, I have to go for a few games of squash racquets…ha, ha…old habits die hard….and then, I just can’t go to sleep until I have read something in bed….so painting is only about once in a month or two.”
How about inviting them over socially during this period? A big NO, NO. Your Captain, don’t forget, is also quite cautious during this period. He has to write a pen-picture about you. All that you are doing is helping him with the right words and phrases to describe you. You overdo it and you have hit yourself on the toe with a hammer. In any case, unless you actually have a few dog paintings and books at home, there is no point in inviting them. Possibly what you can do is to take a photograph of Lucy to a local painter, get a painting made, sign it and Rekha can gift it to ma’am.
Now, the story from the other side! No one would tell you this but I am telling you.
(cartoon courtesy: www.pinterest.com)
The Captain has actually gone through this period several times in the past. He knows and has tried every trick that you can come up with. He has already assessed you during the year. However, he tells himself with a chuckle that there is no harm in pushing through important plans on his ship during the ACR season. He knows his officers would never fail him during this period. He doesn’t even have to order; he kind of suggests or requests and lo and behold it gets done. I know of a brother officer on one of the ships that I served on about whom Captain was absolutely sure that he was really sweating for his ACR. Hence, knowing that in his particular department, a whole lot of work was pending, the Captain delayed sending his report (a Captain may do so up to three months depending upon circumstances) by a few months. Everything was accomplished.
ACR is a game, ladies and gentlemen, that two can play……and, hold your breath, both can win.
The most shameful images that this country had to see in Independent India were aired yesterday, on the eve of India’s 69th Independence Day, when the government tried to forcibly break-up a peaceful protest by ex-servicemen for the long pending demand of OROP (One Rank One Pension). Lets contrast it with the historic Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13th April 1919 when the soldiers of the British Indian Army tried to breakup a peaceful protest by the civilians on the Baisakhi day. Yesterday, it was the reverse: the civilian government, an ungrateful government, turned against soldiers who have sacrificed their everything defending this country.
Just as the country cannot forget the images of Jallianwala Bagh, we can never forget the images like the above from Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, yesterday.
The government also, for the first time signaled that taking on ex armed forces personnel by police and para-military forces is a fair bet since the ex armed forces personnel have already done their bit for the country when in active service and are of little use to the government now; they are not even a large vote bank.
Sadly, people of our great nation don’t see it that way. They have always looked up to the armed forces since the armed forces have delivered each and every time. In the end, what got sullied were not the armed forces personnel who were pushed, shoved, kicked and manhandled. The already sullied images of our netas (irrespective of the political party that they belong to) and babus have now seen the bottom of the pit. Just as the Queen of England never apologised for Jallianwala Bagh massacre, no one expects our netas and babus to apologise for bringing ex servicemen to this mortification.
Today, on the day of our Independence, here is a parody that describes our netas and babus.
My apologies to Jaan Nisar Akhtar, Khaiyyam and Mohammad Rafi for using a parody of their most famous song together to depict what our Netas and Babus have as their anthem today:
चोरी है अपनी ज़मीं, चोरी है अपना गगन,
चोरी है अपना जहाँ, चोरी में लगता है मंन
अपने सभी सुख चोर हैं, अपनी सँगत में सब चोर हैं
आवाज़ दो हम चोर हैं, हम चोर हैं
को: आवाज़ दो, आवाज़ दो हम चोर हैं, हम चोर हैं
ये वक़्त खोने का नहीं, ये वक़्त सोने का नहीं
सबकी जेबें साफ़ करो, किसी को भी ना माफ़ करो
फौजियों ने हमें दी आज़ादी, हम करते हैं उनकी बर्बादी
छलिनी करदो उनका सीना, मुश्किल करदो उनका जीना
दुश्मन भी ना जो करे, हम उनके लिए करते रहें
हर जगह सुहाना शोर है, देश का नेता चोर है
को: आवाज़ दो, आवाज़ दो हम चोर हैं, हम चोर हैं
ये जवान हिमाला में लढा, ये पंजाब में दुश्मन से भिड़ा,
लेकिन हमें ना कोई फ़र्क़ है, जवानो के लिए देश नरक है
रिश्वत पे हमको नाज़ है, पैसा हमारा सरताज है
जनता के पैसे अपने हैं, ये सब हमारे अपने हैं
जवानो ने नमक का मोल दिया, हमने तो उनको बोल दिया
OROP दे देंगे बार बार, पचास साल तो करो इंतज़ार
को: आवाज़ दो, आवाज़ दो हम चोर हैं, हम चोर हैं
उठो जवानां-ए-वतन, बाँधे हुए सर से कफ़न
उठो दक्कन की ओर से, गंग-ओ-जमन की ओर से
पंजाब के दिल से उठो, सतलुज के साहिल से उठो
महाराष्ट्र की खाक से, दिल्ली की अर्ज़-ए-पाक से
बंगाल से गुजरात से, कश्मीर के बागात से
नेफ़ा से राजस्थान से, पुर्ख़ां के हिंदुस्तान से
इस मुल्क़ का नेता चोर है, चारों तरफ ये शोर है
इसका ईमान नोट है, या जनता का वोट है
The biggest two techno-social changes that have happened in the last decade or so have affected our lives in a huge manner. Thanks to these two changes, everyone is a photographer now and everyone can write and publish.
People of this generation, who are already used to these two, won’t even know how difficult it used to be in the past.
Lets take photography first. At one time, as you see in various galleries and museums, only the royal people used to have their photographs taken. The camera – an equipment weighing about 5 to 8 kgs – used to be covered with a black cloth so as to save the film from unintended exposure. No one was well versed to take pictures except skilled photographers. Even after these photographers became available to general public; firstly, the cost was well beyond the reach of anyone except the upper crust; secondly, between clicking (actually it was not even clicking but a calculated exposure by removing the cap of the lens) and developing and printing a photograph a great deal of time would pass; and thirdly, because of the first two, there was nothing like photography on the move such as travel photography or even of events like picnics and birthdays.
(Photo and following caption courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photography “Boulevard du Temple”, a daguerreotype made by Louis Daguerre in 1838, is generally accepted as the earliest photograph to include people. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one apparently having his boots polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible.
Even after the cameras became smaller and gradually SLR (Single Lens Reflex; that is looking at the subject through the same lens through which a picture was to be taken rather than through a view-finder mounted atop the camera), there were only limited pictures (generally 12) that one could click after settings that included weather, speed, exposure etc because of the limitation of camera roll that had to be installed in the camera with great care so as to avoid unintended exposure. One would know about the results of one’s efforts only after the entire roll got over and you went to a photo-studio to have the roll developed and printed.
(Photo courtesy: www.culture24.org.uk showing the picture of a man operating one of the first cameras)
You invited friends and relatives to view your photo albums but rarely shared copies with them unless they featured in the photos. Even at that, to ask photo studio to make copies of specific numbers of photos was frustrating since many times due to reel loading problems, the number occurred atop two adjoining photos.
Even after the digital cameras came up, for the first few years these were so frightfully expensive that they were beyond the reach of the common man.
(Photo courtesy: www.mir.com.my; One of the earliest batch of Leica M3 chrome double stroke model, 1954 model. Here is a lovely illustrative photo of how a typical early Leica M3 camera body looks like. It has slightly cornered top-plate, all early M3 features. Note the lack of viewfinder frame pre-selector lever near the lens mount. Year: 1954 w/Serial No. 70031x. Expected to be pricey in such a condition – to satisfy your curiosity, true enough this unit had an auction price approaching EUR10K !)
And then suddenly, every phone has a camera, everyone is taking photographs and selfies. Earlier, a video camera used to be carried on the shoulder of a qualified videographer; now, people are taking your videos when you are not even aware. Paparazzi is reportedly a nuisance phenomenon and one of the reasons behind Princess Di’s untimely demise in an accident.
(Paparazzi – The Privacy Killer; Pic courtesy: en.docsity.com)
People are posting live pictures and videos on social media such as Facebook and Whatsapp. A number of jokes have come up because of this tendency. In a cartoon, for example, in a building people are advised as follows:
‘IN CASE OF FIRE, IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE BUILDING THROUGH MARKED ESCAPE ROUTES AND NOT WAIT TO TAKE PICTURES AND SELFIES.’
With these millions of pictures on the net, some personal family pictures and others like Google Images, to get people’s attention to view them is quite a task. Various innovative means are thought of to attract people’s attention. One method on Facebook is to tag people in the post with photographs. These people would get notifications such as: “ABC commented on your picture”. You then hope like hell they would see “their picture”. Another method is to give them an attractive and catchy title. For instance, an Income Tax hoarding had an attractive skimpily dressed female with the huge sign that said SEX. As you walked closer, the hoarding said, “Now that we got your attention, we’d like to tell you that the last date for filing Income Tax Return is 30th July”.
Even at that, to get people to see your 349 pictures of your pet dog or 127 of your granddaughter’s mundan ceremony is as difficult as say getting people to see a play titled Swadeshi. There is also this big danger that if people see yours, then they consider you are obliged to see the 292 pictures of their outing to Borivali National Park, which has failed to get your attention since you have been there any number of times anyway.
What about writing? Well, the scene is no different; it is even worse. At one time, to be published was Herculean task. You wrote and wrote and wrote and sent your stuff to newspapers and magazines. They didn’t even respond. Once in a blue-moon, if your letter to the editor got published, it was a much curtailed and edited version of what you wrote.
Nowadays, there are any number of places where you instantly post the fruits of your fertile mind. Indeed, many people do so mindlessly. I have come across people who have written more poems in a year’s time than Wordsworth would have written in his lifetime. I have also come across a blogger who regularly writes two to three articles in a day. Then there are others, who write a paragraph of three to four sentences and call it an article or blog post.
Surprisingly, the more laconic your post or article is, the more people like it and comment on it. It is, they observe, easier to read. Also, mediocrity and even nonsense sell much better than any erudite or intelligent stuff. A few months back, I started a Facebook Group called Main Shayar To Nahin. Initially, there was great enthusiasm to share shair-o-shairi (the cheaper the better and more popular) and we were adding members by dozens. A few examples:
“Bahut dard hota hai jab tum yaad aate ho,
Dard hone se phir tumhaari yaad aati hai”.
“Tanhaayi mein tumhaari yaad aati hai,
Kyaa kahun behisaab aati hai
Kuch tere aane se pehle, sanam
Kuchh tere jaane ke baad aati hai!”
“Dard ki hadd paar ho gayi tere intezzar mein,
Kyaa yehi silaa mila mujhe tere pyaar mein?”
I googled the first one and found nearly a Lakh members of that group in which such cheap poetry is shared. Each such shair has hundreds of likes and comments. And, in contrast, the moment I asked in our group to share good quality poetry of Ghalib, Faiz, Shakeel, Firaq, Daag etc, first of all very few people took the trouble to do it and secondly there were hardly any people interested in them, to like or to comment.
Social media like Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp have an adverse effect of ADS or Attention Deficit Syndrome. No one is interested in a well-researched, well-written article. It has to be something catchy, meant for the dumbos and presented so slick that people fall for those three or four lines that you write. The idea is to enable them to respond since they are authors and writers in their own right. I have had people commenting on my articles copy pasting something that I would have written many months ago in the hope that I too would be suffering from ADS and would have forgotten that it was I who wrote it.
On the Indiblogger, which is a forum for Indian Bloggers, there is a policy of you scratch my back and I scratch yours. In this policy, people would vote and comment on your posts if you vote and comment on theirs. People have discovered that for this MAD (Mutual Assured Dalliance), they don’t really have to actually read anything at all and even if they read they don’t have to pay attention. This is somewhat similar to a minister having asked his secretary to prepare a 20 minutes speech for him and discovering that the speech actually took an hour. He complained to the secretary. She investigated and found that the speech was only 20 minutes long but the minister had read out the two carbon copies too that she had given him to be on the safe side. If you think it is far-fetched, you would do good to remember that our External Affairs Minister Shri SM Krishna recently read out the wrong speech at the United Nations; that of the Portuguese minister!
On Facebook, there is a button called ‘Like’ (Please also read ‘Like’ on this blog). It has answer to all our problems regarding reading anything at all. No matter how long it would have taken the author to write his stuff, you can press Like in less than a second and be done with. You routinely come across people who Like dozens of posts in less than a minute (Please also read ‘Why Read When You Can Like?’).
Various companies profit from this ADS of people at large. They write voluminous Terms and Conditions for their services. Just at the time when you are about to make payment and gain access, you get a message to tick the box to the effect that you have read, understood and agreed with their terms and conditions. You quickly do so without reading anything at all. In any case, if you were to actually read everything you would probably have to log-in all over again. Forget about the transient Internet. Have you ever read the reverse of your dry – cleaner’s receipt or courier consignment receipt or any other receipt? If you actually read through you’d be surprised that the companies, in their terms and conditions, have washed their hands off everything and the total onus of the correctness of their services is on you. Your Internet service-provider’s Terms and Conditions, for example, have nothing whatsoever in your favour even if their services are disrupted for lengthy durations. It is the same with Credit Card companies. Here, you even sign for ‘Our terms and conditions are subject to change’. I used to get a lot of calls from Credit Card companies promising me one Credit Card or the other. I started asking them to provide me with a signed copy of their Terms and Conditions. All calls stopped.
As far as your writings are concerned, you can master various ploys to make people read your stuff. One of the best employed was by the boss telling the secretary, “Mark this TOP SECRET; I want everyone in the office to read it.” But, beyond the ploys, finally it is consistency that pays off. If you have a small niche audience that reads your stuff, you should be happier than if you have had hundreds of Likes.
In the end also remember what Sahir Ludhianvi penned for a song in the Dev Anand movie Hum Dono. He would have never thought one day Sunbyanyname would relate this to social media where everyone is a photographer or writer but there are no viewers or readers:
“Kaun rota hai kusi aur ki khaatir, ai dil?
Sabako apani hi kisi baat pe rona aaya.”
(Who weeps for the sake of someone, O my heart?
Everyone weeps remembering something of their own.)
It is also worth keeping in mind the harsh reality that despite increased techno-social means available in the present world (that’s how I started this essay), the more people you meet on the net, the more alone you are.
It gives immense happiness to read your own articles or to see your own pictures at some later stage in your life when you look at them as another person.
On the 15th of July 2013 we bade adieu, in India, to the 163 years old Telegram service in India. It was started by the British East India company between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour in 1850. Four years later it was made availabe to the general public.
It was, for a century and half, the fastest means of communication available to the common man in India and elsewhere in the world. As soon as the use of sms, Internet and Whatapp became more widespread, the demise of Telegram was just around the corner.
Telegrams used to be the harbinger of news both good and bad, happy and sad. Many a times, due to garbled transmission or reception or both or because of sender’s mistake, unintended situations would arise. It could be as comical as mix up of Greeting Telegram numbers wherein you had intended to convey ‘Congratulations on a well deserved success’; but, the recipient got it as ‘Congratulations on the new arrival’ or ‘May God shower His choicest blessings on the newly-weds.’ Or as serious as ‘Wife expired’ when you had meant to send ‘Happy Independence Day’ message. Such mix-ups had resulted in great sadness and heartburn for people until clarification arrived.
I know the case of a fauji who finally managed leave from a forward posting from where he hadn’t got leave for a long time. He sent a telegram to his wife: ‘Got leave. Reaching home 29th’. When he reached home, he found his wife in bed with another man. He was furious; but, the mother-in-law calmed him by saying she’d check up the reason for her strange conduct. Sure enough, by evening, the mother-in-law had checked and found the reason and triumphantly announced to him, “I knew there would be a simple explanation; she never got your telegram.”
In the Hindi movies, telegrams for just-married faujis used to be delivered to them on their honeymoon nights when they would have just lifted the ghunghat of their newly wedded wives. The only message of the telegram would be asking him to report to border since war had broken out. India has fought five wars with its neighbours Pakistan and China. But, if these telegrams were to be believed, everytime a fauji wedded in a movie, especially, if it was a love-marriage that the family elders hadn’t approved of, a war would breakout at about midnight. Irrespective of how far the sender’s place was, there would be jonga waiting to take him to the war with the wife standing in the doorway of their house bidding him a tearful goodbye. Some would even run behind the jeep barefeet and remind him that Love was what they had between themselves and War was between the two countries and he, over a period of time, shouldn’t get these facts mixed up. One telegram had the power to shatter their dreams. One telegram spelt the difference between Love and War. I give you two consecutive scenes from the Hindi movie Border: the honeymoon scene and the dressing up for reporting to unit scene after the telegram:
In my case, I wasn’t called to the border, but, was sent to Andaman & Nicobar islands with the then Prime Minster Rajiv Gandhi and his Italian wife Sonia embarked on my ship Ganga. Their togetherness was at the cost of my and my Indian wife Lyn’s togetherness when she was expecting our second child. The news of our younger son Arun arriving was sent by her as a telegram which was received in Communication Centre (COMCEN) at Mumbai, who in turn broadcast the message and the ship received it. In my forenoon watch, the CO read out the message to me and I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for them whilst thanking God that He made Life and He made Telegrams.
Unlike our Army counterparts, manpower in the Navy has always been scarce and hence not only that most naval personnel serve far away from their homes, they get leave with great difficulty and reluctance. Many innovative means are devised to first obtain leave and then to ask for extension. One of the telegrams received on my ship from a sailor’s family read: MOTHER SERIOUS. COME HOME FOR DIWALI. There was another similar one received on a sister ship: FATHER BREATHING HIS LAST AWAITING YOUR ARRIVAL FOR CHRISTMAS.
The most innovatively genuine Telegram received asking for extension of leave by a sailor was on board Vikrant where I was initially posted after my Subs Courses. This had us in splits. It read: REQUEST EXTENSION 15 DAYS, WIFE NOT YET SATISFIED. After everyone had vented feelings ranging from extreme anger to pity, the XO (whose Christain motto was ‘It is better to be kind than right’), sent the following historic telegram: EXTENSION GRANTED UNTIL WIFE SATISFIED.
This XO was decidedly a soft XO. There was a hard-boiled-egg of an XO who was aporoached by a sailor for leave having received a telegram from his wife that read: EXPECTING OUR CHILD. COME HOME URGENTLY. The XO read the telegram, opened his table drawer and pulled out another telegram that read: DON’T SEND SOHAN SINGH LEADING SEAMAN ON LEAVE DURING MY DELIVERY AS HE IS A DRUNKARD AND WON’T BE OF ANY HELP.
Naturally, the first telegram received by Sohan Singh was redundant in view of second telegram received by XO from Sohan Singh’s wife. Sohan Singh was about to leave resignedly when his inner conscience goaded him to tell the truth, “Sir, you and I are the world’s best liars; you see, Sir, I am not even married.”
Now that BSNL has stuck the death knell of the Telegram, I am sure life would have undergone a sea change for Indians in general and for our faujis and sailors in particular. What would Diwali, Holi, Christmas, Pongal would be without FATHER EXTREMELY SERIOUS telegram?
When I was small, I used to wistfully look at the hobby selection of my friends. Some were good at stamp collection and had friends in distant corners of the world exchanging philately. During our childhood days, we used to have a candy called Fruitex that had stamps just under the wrapper. People would spend days, months and years collecting stamps from Magyar Posta, USSR and countries whose names we couldn’t pronounce.
Then there were others who liked gardening, photography, travel, poetry, writing, singing. One was into collecting coins too. I too wanted to have a hobby. Poetry and writing suited me most and I liked them. However, the one hobby that I really liked to spend much of my time on was Procrastination. “Don’t put off until tomorrow that which you can do today”, the scriptures taught me that. But, the thought of procrastinating things was far too attractive a temptation not to be tried out. In any case I argued that I could do all those things better tomorrow what I could do today.
The thought of lazily spending the day without much care about doing anything was my vision of an idyllic world. The man who invented the wheel was my ideal; life could go on and on, round and round, without too much of effort. One number that had attraction for me was Beatles’ Let It Be. Another favourite ditty of mine was:
And Noah, he often said to his wife,
Whenever he sat down to dine,
“I don’t care where the water goes,
If it doesn’t get into the wine”.
First of all the ring of the word itself held fascination for me: a Pro word like Progress, Promotion, and Prophylactic unlike those stupid, senseless Anti words such as Antipathy, Anticipation and Antibiotics. Secondly, the last part of the word is spelt as ‘n-a-t-i-o-n’ and I felt that I was doing my duty to the country by being an avid follower of ‘Procrastination’. In this I had healthy competition from our judges and lawyers, politicians and babus; for years, these worthies have been serving the nation by procrastinating everything. Our countrymen too, used to such inherent delays, have angrily questioned, for example, as to what was the flaming hurry in recently hanging a terrorist after merely twenty-two years of trial?
But then, a hobby is different from a vocation or way of life with some of our authorities. RK Laxman’s cartoons about such procrastination brought us untold mirth. In one of these, a politician visits his village constituency after several years of promising them water and electricity. The poor villagers were so excited that in another decade or so someone or the other from the government would look at the promise and see feasibility.
The government of India (irrespective of political parties) turned out to be my biggest competitor in procrastination. As the Republic was constituted on 26 January 1950, it declared India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, assuring its citizens of justice, equality, and liberty, and endeavours to promote fraternity among them. The words “socialist” and “secular” were added to the definition in 1976 by the 42nd constitutional amendment (mini constitution). Where are we 65 years later? Are we making any serious attempts to provide justice, equality, liberty, socialism and secularism? Are we promoting any fraternity among people? Quite the opposite. But, the future is bright and in another hundred years or so our politicians would have actually delivered. Until then, they would keep arguing about what constitutes poverty.
My next competitors were the judges and lawyers and all those connected with providing justice to our countrymen. I had such a lot of competition from them that I knew that however hard I tred I could never emerge as the champion of procrastination in comparison to them. I used to think that the primary aim of our judicial system was to provide livelihood to lawyers and judges and other court officials. Now I know that it is the only reason. Procrastination is a way of life with them. Most of what they do in terms of providing justice is to give you another date of hearing. There are cases in our courts that were started in the times of present litigants parents and grandparents. Imagine if a perpetrator of terror in India’s leading city was convicted after 22 years, how much longer land and other civil dispute cases would take? Thanks to procrastination by the Indian courts, most Indians now believe in divine justice.
All those involved with the implementation of something called OROP (One Rank One Pension) for the Indian Armed Forces – the same Armed Forces that, in 1971, took only 12 days to sort out the problem of East Pakistan – deserve a Lifetime Achievement Award for their excellence in this hobby of procrastination. I could never match their skills.
Our bureaucrats or babus art in procrastination put me in total awe of them. They weild power through this art. The more they procrastinate the richer they become because people are ready to pay underhand for anything that would make our bureaucratic process – reputed to rank amongst the slowest in the world – faster. Aporopriately, this money is called speed-money. Lets say, you want to start a small factory manufacturing pipes for irrigation. Excellent idea. But, you want to start it during your lifetime itself! Problem. In order to obtain all the clearances, if you are so idealistic as to cringe from paying speed-money your factory would be a pipe-dream.
Our engineers and contractors involved in providing public infrastructure such as roads translate their hobby of procrastination into making more and more money. Projects that were to originally cost A-crores, due to their inimitable skills at procrastination eventually cost A x 10 and in some cases A x 20.
Your neighbourhood friendly doctor literally prolongs your illness as long as his/her felt need of having burgeoning bank-balance is not met. Your cure is always just around the corner.
Something called Investigation or Inquiry in India still ranks amongst the highest form of procrastination; order one and you as a neta or babu is free from the burdens of responsibility or accountability for decades.
With this kind of stiff competition, I finally realised that I cannot get anywhere in my hobby. There are Masters of Procrastination who have been doing it for generations without much competition.
I took to writing and poetry and music. Next, I am thinking of stamp-collection!
There is an anecdote about a Midshipman going berserk on a ship. He started playing with shit with his hands and at the same time asking the Topasses to obtain more and more shit from the WCs. The man-management bug had just started in the Navy and hence, rather than sending him straight to the cooler, his Training Officer decided to use tact and counseling with him. He asked him gently as to what he was doing. Without batting an eyelid the Midshipman responded, “I am trying to make a Lieutenant out of it.”
Not being able to handle this on his own, the Training Officer reported this to the XO (Executive Officer), the second-in-command. By that time, more and more shit was being brought to the Midshipman’s JOM (Junior Officers’ Mess). He too inquired as to what the snotty was up to. Pat came the reply that he was making an XO out of it. This was then reported to the Captain who evinced a response that the Mid was making a Captain out of it.
Now this was rather unusual and reported to the Fleet Commander, the last word in Man-management in the Fleet. This wizened man berated the others for not knowing how to handle this “simple” situation, approached the Midshipman, and rather than questioning, said in his heavy baritone, “Don’t tell me, son, what you are doing; I know that you are making an Admiral out of the shit.”
“No, Sir”, responded the Midshipman calmly, “I don’t have enough shit for that.”
It has always been there in the Navy. We live in close quarters with our senior officers and jokes – both overt and covert – abound about this species called ‘Senior Officers’. The reactions to this type of banter are undergoing a huge change these days. We used to have many old-timers who used to recognise that such harmless banter was the sure shot way of cooling tempers and returning to sanity after letting off steam by the juniors. These senior officers would merrily join in the banter and would be expected to crack one or two juicy ones on themselves, which the narrator would be otherwise shy to relate.
It is not easy to allow a joke on yourself when you are the senior officer. It is even more difficult to crack one yourself. And the most difficult is to have a good laugh on these and not earmark it for sorting out the narrator when the opportunity would arise. I am afraid the percentage of senior officers who would take offence is forever increasing. Gone are the days when the senior officers would permit these large-heartedly.
One such person was Admiral Dawson. On the day when he was promoted from Commander to Captain, he was walking to his car at the end of the day, in civvies. A few junior officers too were walking and didn’t recognise him (he was just behind them). They were talking enthusiastically about this b——d called Commander Dawson who was this and that but always a b. At the end of the jetty, Dawson overtook them, turned around and said, “Not Commander Dawson; but, Captain Dawson from now onwards.” The junior officers were stunned and frozen.
Another was Captain Lewin. He was endowed with great sense of humour. During one of his unannounced rounds of his ship, he came across a few Acting Sub Lieuts curiously espying the pages of a Playboy magazine. He called them to his cabin. Being called to Captain’s cabin is nothing short of being marched up to gallows and the Sub Lieuts were expecting the worst. Captain Lewin opened his table drawer, took out a copy of the Navy List (a compendium of all officers in the Navy from CNS downwards, branch-wise) and gave it to them with the remark, “You guys don’t have to spend good money on Playboys. Here, take this (Navy List). You will see more c—-s here than in all the Playboys and Penthouses.”
My CO on Ganga, Captain KK Kohli, was another such large-hearted senior officer. When it came to cracking jokes on the ship everyone had equal rights. Once, on the Bridge, we were all getting nice and proper from him. He noticed me doodling on the blank reverse side of an NC1 (Signal form). He was pretty cheesed off that whilst he was slanging, I was amusing myself by doodling. He angrily snatched the paper from me and saw that I had drawn a complete cricket field with KKK batting and all of us in various fielding positions. He couldn’t believe his eyes. I thought that would be the end of my till then brilliant career. Anyway, he gave the paper back and asked me to draw my own position that he had seen was missing. With trembling hands I took the paper and drew myself at Silly Mid-on! He had a look at it and pocketed the paper. The whole day I kept thinking of how my thoughtlessness had spelt the end of my naval career. Late in the evening, his coxswain came to my cabin with a message, “From Captain to Silly Mid-on: Come and have a glass of beer with me.” Everyone familiar with ships at sea would know that is rare honour indeed.
My Captain on Viraat, Jaggi Bedi, too had a keen sense of humour that promoted team spirit. When things would get tense – and honestly, there were many such moments with the old Viraat having fire and flooding at the drop of the hat – JSB would crack a pippin’ of a joke to relieve tension. Most of these were not directed against anyone but either at the circumstances that we were in or similar circumstances in which Banta Singh or the subject of the joke would find himself. There was one he told the divers of the Command Clearance Diving Team (CCDT) who were very tense because one of our sea tubes was leaking and they were sent to block the sea ingress to it so that repairs could be carried out. Only, the joke is a risqué one and I cannot relate it here. But, it was enough to bring down all around tension and normalcy returned to everyone’s thinking.
Having been in the old-time Navy, it was a rude shock to encounter some of the latter-day senior officers who would actually finish the career of the subordinates who would even think of indulging in such banter. One such guy sent me a show-cause notice asking me to explain why action shouldn’t be taken against me for not ensuring the working condition of a particular equipment. I really thought it was some sort of joke since I was the one who brought it to the notice of the authorities repeatedly that this particular equipment wasn’t working since the time it was installed, ie, for the last ten years even with my predecessors. So, in reply to the show-cause notice, I made a detailed response giving not my perception but facts and figures from various documents. I ended my submission, in my characteristic style: “In the end, I would like to bring out the advice given to a new teacher by a veteran: ‘As you go into the classroom, you would come across a student who is persistently asking questions. Don’t ever be offended by him; he may be the only one paying attention’.”
A Letter of Severe Displeasure (the highest punishment that can be summarily awarded to an officer) was given to me for my misdemeanour. End of humour. I became Yaqub Memon. Humour had led not to pleasure but displeasure.
Looking back, that was still an odd case. Most other senior officers that I came across in the Navy sorted out matters of humour with equivalent or better humour. In one of the Shiksha (exercise between Commands with Chief of the Naval Staff being the umpire) exercises, whenever a situation arose and a Fleet team was asked to respond, the FOO (Fleet Operations Officer) taking down the Fleet Commander’s instructions differed with him on every point. Finally, in good humour, this Fleet Commander grabbed the pen and paper from his FOO and said without even a trace of confrontation or bitterness, “Okay, you dictate the instructions and I shall write.” I was part of the same team and I just couldn’t believe my ears.
The national leadership, these days, is on short-fuze. Any cartoonist, writer or critic drawing or writing anything in good humour but critical of authorities is promptly jailed (Please also read: A Dangerous Profession). My service, Navy, was never like this. For a short duration, as a stop-gap, I was Flag Lieutenant (naval equivalent of an ADC) to a Chief of Naval Staff (CNS). We were going to receive the PM of a foreign country at Palam (New Delhi). We were resplendent in our ceremonial uniforms and CNS’s flag flew in the front of the car. Even at that, one of the traffic cops stopped us at a junction to allow the car of the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his complete entourage pass (they were going to receive the same foreign PM). I was hot under the collar and wanted to berate the traffic cop. The CNS, in excellent humour restrained me by saying, “Don’t do that, Flags; I am only a Chief (a Chief Petty Officer sailor is generally referred to as Chief!).”
Years later, our ex President APJ Abdul Kalam when asked to remove his belt and shoes in a security check at the airport reacted likewise.
I guess the really great have great sense of humour. Others have arrogance; but they ain’t great.
This is a humorous take on our penchant for secrecy, the kind that evokes nostalgic mirth. It is not meant as criticism. Of course we have our reasons for secrecy and most of these are valid reasons. Humour, of course, obtains from those quaint situations and anecdotes that arise from this ubiquitous penchant.
www.outsiderclub.com
Armed forces personnel are, by nature, secretive and suspicious. I must have had traits of a potential fauji at very early stages of my life. As kids, we were of impressionable age when the Indo-Pak War of 1965 started. We were in the town of Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. Our group of 11 to 12 year olds had felt that what stood between the country’s continued freedom and hostile destruction was – to a large measure – our vigilance. Inspired by the news on All India Radio wherein Paki spies routinely disguised themselves as sadhus and beggars, every such person visiting our colony was subjected to intense search and scrutiny. One or two of them were severely beaten up for not being able to prove their identities. A Horticulture (my dad’s chosen field of work) Colony was coming up in Jawahar Nagar (now must be called Sonia or Rahul Nagar in keeping with the equivalent penchant of our netas) and the labourers were mainly of Tibetan origin. They were living in tents across our house and used to cook on wood. One night – the first night after we had finished putting carbon paper on all glass window panes so that no light would show outside during black-outs – our vigilant group spotted these Tibetans cooking on wood-fires. We felt that these were open invitations for the PAF Canberras to bomb the hell out of us. So, we stridently ordered the labourers to take their fires inside the tents; much against their protests. After about 30 minutes of their complying with our orders, two of the tents caught fire and it took us hours to put out the fires. Luckily, PAF Canberras were not as vigilant as we were.
Ten years later, I joined the Indian Navy as a commissioned officer and realised that my sense of secrecy was still precocious; I had much more to learn. As a Lieutenant I was made a member of a pricing board for buying fresh vegetables. Those days, rations were not supplied to us by the naval Base Victualing Yard (BVY) but through the ASC or Army Supply Corps depot in what we had erroneously been thinking of as naval area but was later confirmed as military area because of the Army’s penchant to hold land even in naval stations. I was stunned to see that the proceedings of this board were marked SECRET. I was thinking of it as a misprint but the board president, a Colonel, assured me otherwise. Later, when I became married, and started receiving those free rations (subsequently called entitled rations so that our civilian counterparts would not exercise their own penchant for always bringing out that freebies were given to us at the drop of a hat), I knew that marking them SECRET was the right thing to do; even I would have wanted them to be SECRET so that others won’t see my mortification at their poor quality. There is always a reason!
Often, the marking of classification evokes curiosity in others. It is somewhat similar to the boss telling the secretary: “Mark this SECRET; I want everyone in the office to read it”. Take social media, for example; you painstakingly put up your posts on which you spend hours researching. However, no one reads them including those who press the Like button. However, if there was some way you could tell people that it has information meant only for the few select ones, see how fast the readership would grow. At one time, the information about Pak Navy assets including weaponry and missiles was SECRET and all of us knew the details like the back of our hands. And then it occurred to Naval Headquarters as to why should stuff that had been gleaned from Jane’s publications be SECRET; so they made it unclassified. End of our curiosity and their being widely known! I can imagine the Naval Intelligence officers exchanging chuckles whilst reading this; they know they were engaged in something useful all these years by passing off news items as intelligence.
(Pic courtesy: www.secrecyfilm.com)
Now, I am sharing with you another source of real intelligence for the naval community in Mumbai, during our days: the newspaper vendor called ODI Mendon. Lets say a friend of yours owed you money (a realistic scenario) and he told you that as soon as he’d get his pay (an unrealistic scenario) he’d return the money since during those days you received your pay in cash. On the first of the next month when you went by you mobike (with the last drops of petrol in it) to extract your owing from him, you found that his ship had sailed. It was a catastrophe and only the hope of the ship’s return would provide you with some silver lining. However, the ships’ movements are highly classified and you can’t get information from anywhere. If you thought hard, you’d find that ODI Mendon was the answer. He’d tell you when exactly the ship would be back; they having stopped the newspaper with him, before sailing, for a specific number of days. He would also tell you which other ships and submarines had sailed. Similarly, MM Pajni, the LIC agent would tell you the ships’ programme as he knew when exactly to come to Naval Dockyard and collect the due premiums of the Life Insurance policies.
But, SECRET or even TOP SECRET doesn’t attract as much curiosity as something called PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL (P&C). As a young Lieutenant I was posted as an instructor in Navy’s Leadership School INS Agrani at Coimbatore. Our CO, we came to know through rumours, was being overlooked for promotion. During those days, officers received P&C letters regarding the status of their promotions. So, when such a letter arrived at Agrani, curiosity got the better of us. We broke the seals, opened the letter and read how the Navy is such a pyramidal structure and how at various stages some people, however outstanding they are, have to fall off; and so on. The problem was how to put it back: there was an outer ordinary cover and then there was a sealed cover inside; whose seals now had perished. So the Captain’s Secretary (Cap Sec) overnight got a seal manufactured and on the next forenoon the operation of resealing it was done. During those days, it cost him a bomb.
When the CO arrived next day and the mail presented to him, he took out the sealed envelope, didn’t even open it, gave it to his Cap Sec and said, “Just open it and file it in my P&C File. It is a letter from ACOP (Assistant Chief of Personnel); I am not making it to the next rank.” Cap Sec felt like a heel.
The most curious incident of this misplaced secrecy was a signal regarding the movement of one of our Chiefs of Naval Staff (CNS) who was accorded high security due to our operations in Sri Lanka against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Hence, whilst a MOVREP (Movement Report) signal is generally unclassified, his MOVREP signals used to be SECRET and encrypted accordingly. As CCO (Command Communication Officer) it was my duty to decrypt them and show them to only the C-in-C and the Chief of Staff (COS). The MOVREP signal is in a format that reads: Name, rank, number, designation, arrival date and time, from where arriving and how (train, air etc), purpose of visit, number of days of visit, departure date and time, and whether transport and mess accommodation are required and any other information. I showed the decrypted signal to COS and he remarked, “By making it SECRET, at least his movements are now classified and not known to everyone.” I disagreed and showed him three unclassified MOVREP signals of three Naval Headquarters officers received simultaneously. In the palce about how were they arriving, each one of them had dutifully written: ‘By CNS Aircraft’.
This was like the parts of those messages received at sea wherein the classified words were coded in Naval Tactical Code. So a signal would read something like: “Call-sign F1 (say Fleet Commander) would be airborne from 1630 to 1715 hours by NATCO blah blah blah blah UNNATCO”. You didn’t even have to decode it to bring out that blah blah blah blah meant HELO. Only the absolute dumbo would imagine that Fleet Commander would be airborne by KITE or BIRD!
Life goes on. Some of our things are so SECRET that even we don’t have any idea of what they are.
There must be thousands like me in the armed forces of India; we join at a very young age (I was 19 when I joined the Naval Academy or NAVAC at Cochin (now called Kochi) in 1973) and retire when we do not have much life left to see (I retired in end Feb 2010 as Commodore at the age of 56). The other day, on Facebook, I saw security executives in my present corporate where I work celebrating four years (to them it appears a long time with the present trend of job-hopping) of having been there in the same industry. I spent 37 years in the Indian Navy and I could have celebrated this feat nine times over!
I was given the President’s Commission on 01 July 1975 and just a few days back my course-mates and I greeted one another on having completed 40 years of commissioned life. At the time of joining, some of my course-mates were suave, smart, confident and in with the naval way of life. To me, it was all very strange (if I were a girl, I would have been called Alice irrespective of what my parents would have named me!). One or two of the course-mates even appeared to have been from a different planet; one still appears thus. I must have been the most awkward and unlike a Labrador, the least trainable.
What fascinated me about the Navy? The short answer is books and movies; I lapped them up during my boyhood days and imagined myself standing on the deck of a ship like, say, Willie Keith in Caine Mutiny or George Ericson in The Cruel Sea. I also had this strange wanderlust and hence going to sea was as far as I could get from the hills of Himachal where I had been for all my childhood and boyhood years. Now that I have retired from the Navy though the sea is still as fascinating (Please read ‘The Lure Of The Sea’), my next fascination is about matters of philosophy and meta-physics (you will find my writings on these in the Philosophy section of this blog)
So, one fine day, from my home-station in Simla (now spelt Shimla), in May 1973, I took a train to Cochin to be trained (tough job for them!) to become an Indian Navy officer. Here are the last two pictures with my people before Navy claimed me:
You must have seen two things in the above pictures: the short hair-cut that I supported in preparation for the Naval life and the huge smile. As soon as I landed up at Cochin they modified both. The journey to Cochin from Simla had taken only two and half days and how much my hair would have grown in less than three days? However, the urgency with which I was taken to the barber (barbarian?) made it seem like I was some hirsute sadhu who had emerged from the caves in the hills after long hibernation. I couldn’t believe the mirror when this barbarian had finished with me; all resemblance to a wantonly college-going teenager was gone forever. My snake-leather belt, large brass buckle and my bell-bots were all gone. Even civvies for us were the muftis with a neck-tie. Uniform became a way of life in profession, in spare time, in thoughts and even in sub-consciousness.
The next were my seniors who appeared to be direct descendants of Goebbels; they made me wipe my smile as if it was an ugly scar. One of them got used to ragging me with a simple monosyllable word repeated ad-inifinitum (one of the two in his extensive vocabulary; the other being No). An intelligent conversation with him went like this:
A: Why didn’t you report to me yesterday?
Me: Sir, I broke my leg.
A: So?
Me: I reported to the hospital.
A: So?
Me: They put my leg in a cast. It is still in the cast as you can see.
A: So?
“So, Sir, I prayed whole night to God to make me a bird” I wanted to add, “But, then He told me I would have to do without a brain because He had given you the bird(‘s)-brain.”
I also found out that neither my seniors nor any of the staff at NAVAC respected time of the day or night; one could be asked to do front-rolls immediately after dinner or do somersaults in the middle of the time. I was also to learn, at great cost to my dignity (or whatever remained of it) and physique that during war we may have to change various rigs in less than a minute each time lest the enemy should steal advantage over us. And, in order to prevent enemy from seeking this advantage, those of us who couldn’t finish rig-changing in a minute’s time had to go through the kind of torture that the enemy would have unleashed on all.
These staff and seniors, totally bereft of even the remotest traces of civility, made me do things that were well beyond my own endurance and stamina and against my loudest protestations. For example, they predicted that if they threw me in the deep end of the swimming pool, I would automatically learn swimming. I knew it was impossible and I tried my best to tell them so. However, they insisted on the correctness of their theory. Lo, and behold, after a few dunkings and after my having drunk gallons of chlorinated water, it is they who were proved right and I automatically learnt swimming. Late at night in my bed I formed the opinion that it wasn’t correct that God listened to the godly and righteous people; He also listened to such devils.
In likewise manner, I automatically learnt many a thing and discovered newer limits for my own endurance and stamina.
I learnt, for example, that one could go to sleep whilst standing erect on the bridge of Cadet Training Ship Delhi with binoculars in hand tied to a lanyard around the neck.
I also learnt about Relativity of Time; four hours spent in the club (Officers Institute) in the drunken company of my course mates would pass in a jiffy; whilst the same four hours during the middle watch on the ship appeared like four years.
To add to the misery of training days was the naval lingo that had quaint feel about it. One had to say “Aye aye Sir” if one wanted to say “Yes Sir”; port for left, starboard for right, and “very good” whilst acknowledging a report even if the report was about an impending collision.
I remember seeing the Daily Orders for the first time and laughed that even in an official document personnel were called by their nicknames such as Popti for our physical training instructor until it was explained to me after considerable front-rolling and bend-stretches that it wasn’t Popti but PO PTI (Petty Officer Physical Training Instructor).
Armed forces are, I gradually learnt, always training. Many years later, when I was the Director of Maritime Warfare Centre at Mumbai (I am the only officer who has been Director of all three MWCs in the Navy involved in tactical operational training of Command teams), the motto on the Large Screen Display in the auditorium was by General Patton: ‘The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war’. Armed forces, therefore, are always sweating.
On Cadet Training Ship INS Delhi, our only contact with the civilian world was to be taken for what was called RWR (Road Walk and Run) along the Marine Drive in Bombay. What a world awaited us, we thought; Bombay, the dream city of Hindi films (not yet bastardised to ‘Bollywood’) and glamour, the city of marines and window to the rest of the world, the city of money, and the city of possibilities. And when I finally joined it, honestly, there was this air about us that put us on a pedestal. During those days, you rubbed shoulders with the elite and they were dying to be seen with you. During my Acting Sub Lieutenant days, we could sit in the Ante Room and enjoy the company of Nutan and Tanuja. A video of those days is going around showing really big film stars, singers and music directors attending the Navy Ball.
Forty years back, I remember, I had gone in uniform to receive a senior officer at Bombay Central. After receiving him, as I stood in the queue for a cab to take me back to my ship INS Himgiri, a cop who was directing people into cabs, beckoned me at the end of the queue, stopped the next cab for me, put me into it, without any protest or demurring from anyone ahead of me in the queue. It felt really nice being a uniformed naval officer.
And what about going abroad? For a boy from a small town in Himachal, who was awed by walking and running along the Marine Drive in Bombay, stepping on a foreign shore was ecstasy indeed. Our CO said we were to be ambassadors of our great country and as I covered in ‘Foreign Jaunts’, it felt great to be in the naval-diplomatic role wherever we went. Many decades later, in the year 2001, as the Indian Navy organised its International Fleet Review in Mumbai, the motto selected by them was ‘Bridges of Friendship Across the Seas’. I remember our visit to Odessa in erstwhile USSR (now in Ukraine) on Himgiri, my second ship as a commissioned officer after three weeks on Vikrant in harbour. The official reception was held on the second evening. All the lovely Russian damsels attending the reception asked us why the officers were not attending the reception. We were flummoxed until the mystery unfolded. In foreign shores, sailors go on shore leave in uniform whereas officers go out in civvies. Some of these damsels, fascinated by naval uniforms, gave company to some of the sailors over drinks, dancing and dinner. When they inquired from these sailors the meaning of two crossed anchors badges on their sleeves, the sailors responded that they were officers (conveniently forgetting to add that they were Petty Officers!) and hence permitted to wear uniform ashore whereas the other ranks had to perforce go out in civvies.
In Split, erstwhile Yugoslavia, my first foreign visit as an officer
The fascination for naval uniform abroad was to be seen to be believed. I have seen in real life and in pictures people stopping to have their pictures clicked with men in uniform.
During the training period and in our formative years in the Navy, we almost totally forgot about our families. My only sister, for example, got married when I was a cadet, holy-stoning the decks of INS Delhi (erstwhile HMS Achilles that took part in the famous Battle of the River Plate against German battleship Graf Spee, together with HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter. The movie was shot in 1956 and the ship had already been transferred to us in 1958. During the shooting an aerial photo shoot was to be redone because when the reel was developed, it came out that a Sikh sailor, complete with his turban, had come out on the upper deck of Delhi!). I never attended her marriage or any other marriage; I was married to the Navy.
We did manage to fall in love and get married (Please read ‘Lyn And I – Scene By Scene‘); but, the Navy proudly and correctly told our wives that Navy happened to be our first love and they could, at best, be Number Two. The wives themselves had no doubt and never tried to be Numero Uno in our lives. Strangely, the ladies too learnt the ropes through the automatic process that I mentioned above. Whilst we had learnt quick rig-changing, my wife learnt the art of quick packing and unpacking both on permanent as well as temporary duties. They also automatically learnt how to get the best from MES (Military Engineering Service); for example, how many incandescent bulbs of what wattage they were entitled to in exchange for how many. They waited endlessly for us to return to harbour; only to see us off again on another mission, which, they complained the newspaper man and the dhoodhwalla knew all about; but, which “thanks to your stupid secrecy norms, you don’t tell us”.
Our first child, Arjun, was born immediately after my father’s untimely death in an accident and hence under trying circumstances. Our second child, Arun, was born when I was away for a month to Andaman and Nicobar islands on my ship INS Ganga with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his Italian wife Sonia embarked. Lyn, my wife, walked to the hospital, quickly delivered and returned home so as to look after the first one too. Now that we were raising a family – and in my case, under most difficult conditions (as you would have gathered from the blog ‘Lyn And I – Scene By Scene’) – for the nth time, the automatic process came in handy. Both the children too became fiercely independent (Read ‘Diminishing Dad‘), capable and accomplished almost entirely on their own. The other day, my erstwhile coxswain of INS Aditya, a retired Petty Officer, brought his daughter for selection in ICSI (Institute of Company Secretaries of India) run institute called CCGRT (Centre for Corporate Governance Research and Training). She is from a small town in Andhra and just 12th standard pass. She had to compete against graduates and diploma holders but she easily got selected, thanks to the automatic learning process of the armed forces.
During our days there was a joke about a naval officer’s involvement with his family (I believe the joke is still prevalent). A naval officer was asked how big his two children were. He pointed out with his hands, not vertically, but horizontally. This was rather quaint way of bringing out the size of his children and he was asked to explain. He responded, “I see them in the bed only; when I leave in the morning they are still in bed, when I return late at night, they have already gone to bed.”
Naval families ‘automatically’ grow up and learn to stand on their own feet.
Ask a naval officer as to what are his most nostalgic experiences in the Navy. With very few exceptions, he would answer:
#1, the Midshipman Tenure. It was a rank unique to the Navy when one was not quite a commissioned officer yet and also not a cadet. This lasted for only six months whereas we would have wanted it to last a lifetime; you’d start getting some perks of being and officer and yet not too much of responsibility. Indeed, in the naval slang a Midshipman used to be called Snotty as he would be frequently wiping his nose on his sleeve. Our Midshipman tenure was on INS Tir, an erstwhile River Class Frigate of the Royal Navy; and we had a ball, even though we had to do hot-bunking (the number of bunks in our mess being much less than the number of Midshipmen on the premise that a certain number would be on duty by rotation all the times).
#2, the Command of a Ship, Submarine or Aircraft. A Commanding Officer is next to God. Indeed, as the old timers used to say: “Ham God nahin hain, par, God se kam bhi nahin hain.” (I am not God; but I am no less than God). The responsibility that the nation places on a CO of a ship, submarine or aircraft at sea is as mammoth as the unfettered powers given to him; you can’t afford to make mistakes; people’s lives are dependent on you. During our training years we used to wonder how the CO, even whilst asleep in his cabin, instinctively knew what revolutions the ship did by the sound of the engines and whether we were headed into danger. Two decades later when I commanded my own ship, I realised that it comes to you automatically.
#3, to be given an official transport (vehicle). Ahh, for this, during our days, one had to be a very senior officer! And then, the moment this honour (Read: Navy And Staff Cars) was bestowed on you, you sat at the left rear of an Ambassador car, saluted back with a flourish all those who saluted you and failed to recognise your erstwhile friends lest they should ask you to share the prized possession.
Nearly 37 long years went as if in a jiffy. And before you can pause, the Navy retires you. Three days after I retired from the Navy on 28th Feb 2010, I wrote a blog ‘I Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Did I?’ in which I concluded “I have no desire to fly over the cuckoo’s nest. The loony bunch is family, for heaven’s sake.” There is nowhere to go. Five years later, after working in India’s largest corporate, there is still nowhere to go; Navy is the only home I knew, the only life I had.
We hadn’t seen any life on civvie street at all. The civilians must be smart in their own ways; after all they command large organisations, governments and countries, whereas all that we do is to command ships, submarines and aircraft. However, frankly, I haven’t met anyone half as smart as a naval officer! In my case, in the Naval Academy, in the Ante Room, I distinctly remember that we waited for someone smart to switch on the television as one, we hadn’t seen one before; and two, with its complex sounding controls such as Contrast, Brightness, V hold and H hold, people would laugh at us if we didn’t know how to get a picture that didn’t jump on the screen. Years later, we were handling with ease, the most complex Electronic Warfare and Action Information systems. The Navy lets you learn all these – well, by now even you know the process – automatically.
Navy was life, a system that used to work; and I know it still works. We were always responsible and accountable for all our actions and non actions; except perhaps during our Midshipmen days. And then you are faced with the lack of discipline and accountability to that extent wherein people die and no one is to be blamed; wherein brand new bridges collapse and no one is accountable; wherein after 40 years of promises and more promises, we still don’t have an OROP (One Rank One Pension) and everyone assures you it would be there shortly.
A Navy man is totally at home when he is at sea as I wrote in Lure of the Sea. But, the moment he is out, he pines for the sea, the only life he’s had.
As Director, College of Naval Warfare in Mumbai, in the year 2008; I took the Naval Higher Command Course student officers with me to a tour of South Africa and Mauritius. In Mauritius we visited the Folk Museum of Indian Immigration. We were surprised to see the records of all indentured labourers who came to British Mauritius from Bihar between 1834 and 1921 (the museum houses 2000 volumes of these). In the year 1835, slavery was abolished in Mauritius and hence these were called indentured labourers.
Similarly, if you go to the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, you would be stunned at the painstaking way in which the British maintained the records of all the prisoners brought from India to the jail that came to be known as Kala Pani (Black Water). The British were cruel and committed untold atrocities on Indian slaves, but, they were much better than us for their record-keeping or documentation.
When I saw Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi I was surprised to see in the end that almost all the credits and acknowledgments of Indian history records were to the Britishers.
We learnt many a thing from our rulers but we didn’t learn from them this due diligence in record keeping. This has resulted in many an embarrassing situation. After the Kargil War in July 1999, Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav was awarded the highest military honour: The Param Vir Chakra. His citation read that he was being awarded this posthumously. It was a big relief and huge embarrassment for Army Headquarters to know that he was actually alive. The Armed Forces of India are at perpetual war with the Indian bureaucracy for the step-motherly treatment that they often get (the present OROP controversy is one of the examples). However, it is a fact that we are equally poor in record keeping at least. Please read: Rediff On The NeT Army battling to correct its Param Vir mistakes.
After the infamous 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, Indian government handed over two demarches to Pakistan. Amongst other things, the demarches asked for the arrest of and handing over of about 20 persons including gangster Dawood Ibrahim, Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist leader Maulana Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafeez Mohammad Saeed. It was widely reported in the Indian newspapers that the list also included at least four names of “hardened criminals” enjoying “immunity” in Pakistan when actually they were held in Indian prisons.
We fought a major war with China in 1962. Fifty three years later, we still do not have an officially accepted record of the history of the war. The Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report, also referred to as the Henderson Brooks report, is the report of an analysis (Operations Review) of the Sino-Indian of 1962. Its authors are Indian Army officers: Lieutenant-General TB Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Premindra Singh Bhagat, Commandant of the Indian Military Academy at that time. However, the report has not been declassified even though there has been hue and cry about its publication.
Why do we, as a nation and armed forces, land up in this mess? The reason appears to lie in the glory and glamour attached to operations and looking down on administrative skills. The armed forces have a Defence Services Staff College in Wellington (Nilgiris) to teach the middle ranking armed forces officers administrative skills. However, when an armed forces officer lands up after the Staff Course, say, in Naval Headquarters, he quickly finds out that practically it is so different from what has been theoretically taught to him. Many have realised that locating an earlier letter or file is a virtual impossibility. Hence, an armed forces officer is most likely to indulge in what is known as reinventing the wheel when it comes to long-standing issues (these are “long-standing” because of the babus in the Ministry of Defence).
In the IAF, for example, fliers want to do flying all the times. Attending courses, for them, is considered beneath their macho spirit. When I underwent Higher Command course with the Army (I did HC 25 in the year 1996-97), I was able to learn from my IAF counterparts that officers pull strings to get out of attending courses so that they can continue doing what they like most: flying.
On the lighter side, after leaving the Navy in end Feb 2010, I have found that my name and address held in various departments in the Western Naval Command has rarely been correct. Because of this, many a times, I have missed important meetings and functions. I have tried my best in the last five years to get the records corrected by writing mails with my correct name and address and have personally visited the Command Headquarters to get these corrected. However, so strong is our inclination to be administratively poor that until now I haven’t received many letters with my correct name and address.
Another curious thing that I have discovered is that in the header of the mail from an official/authority in the Armed Forces, if a telephone number is given, it is rarely of the officer signing it. If you have a query regarding the letter that you have received and you dial this number, you are likely to get connected to the clerk who typed out the letter and he would have no idea of what you are asking.
The Army Headquarters are the worst in this. At one time an opportunity arose in my corporate to employ retired Major Generals for some very senior billets. Through my friends in Naval Headquarters, I got in touch with the Army Headquarters (MS Branch). The officer there seemed to understand my request for the names of a few Major Generals who had just retired. However, after a few days when I was expecting a list from him, I received a mail asking me to spell out my requirement again by mail (this is a favourite ploy with all services headquarters). A phone number and Fax number was given at the letter head. Fifteen days of unsuccessfully trying to get in touch on those numbers left me totally drained out.
On the First of July this year, my course completed 40 years of having received President’s Commission. I retired five years back and likewise with my coursemates except those who retired as Rear and Vice Admirals later. All of us were full of nostalgia about our active time in the Navy. As if to bring me down to mother earth, just a day prior to that, on 30th June, I received a letter from the Pension Cell in Naval Pay Office that my Genform (a General Information order regarding movements of personnel) for having retired on 28th Feb 2010 had not been received by them. It has been only five and half years. Perhaps in another half a decade they would get it. Nothing changes; we are proud of our administrative inefficiency despite the computer age and improved means of communications.
Now that after retirement I am employed in a corporate, I am able to see the difference in work culture: you have people specifically for specific duties as given in their JDs or Job Descriptions. In the armed forces, one is expected to do everything as and when the need arises; and many a times someone else’s job too. No one tells you how; you learn as you go along. If the armed forces were to be a play or drama, there is rarely a prepared script or dialogues or plot; you ad-lib the entire thing. People’s lives are at stake, at times, and hence you better get your role right; the first time itself without any rehearsals. For example: “That over there is Tiger Hill. Now get it vacated of intruders.”
Why did I think of the Navy as a drama or a play when I was in active service? Well, come to think of it, even life is like that. But, I had one more reason: my fondness for acting and directing honed from my school and college days. In the NAVAC or Naval Academy, on the positive side, I was much in demand for plays and skits, even extempore ones during camps. On the negative side, I recall that a boxing bout between me and my course mate was stopped by the referee on the ground that whilst the entire thing looked very impressive complete with wincing and all that, he was sure that we should stop acting and get on with real boxing for a change. Actual blood and bruises followed after that and then only our officers and instructors were happy. Histrionics have their time and place elsewhere in the Navy, I learnt.
One such opportunity came my way when I was posted to Navy’s Leadership School at INS Agrani in Coimbatore. One fine day, our CO called a senior colleague and me to his office and said a letter had arrived from Southern Naval Command at Cochin for us to field a team at the Annual Dramatic Championship. He said the responsibility for taking this task on rested on my shoulders since I was the junior most officer posted there. He said my colleague Amarjit Bajwa would help me out.
Bajwa and I took our task rather seriously and that night discussed our strategy over several bottles of beer that continued till wee hours of the morning. In our drunken stupor a brainwave hit us; which is, that in order to enact a play, we require a script. So, next day we started searching in our library for play scripts. We found that the library was loaded with books on current affairs, history, poems, stories and the like; however, there was not a single play. In the next few days, we ransacked various libraries in and around Coimbatore; but we couldn’t find a suitable play.
We even went to the Staff College Library in Wellington by Bajwa’s Bullet mobike. But, it appeared that whilst in real – life in the armed forces, everybody is acting, there was a dearth of good play-scripts to help out people acting on stage.
After these expeditions, we involved a few sailors in doing a play. Various problems came our way. One prominent one was that most of the play scripts had some female cast. Our tall Regulating Petty Officer (Naval Police) was persuaded by us to put on a saree and shifting his role from being a terror in office to being a terror at home. But, somehow even the donning of Saree made no difference to his austere and upright naval police looks.
We tried a few sailors for their suitability in various roles and found that they were typically suited only for one role!
Dejected, one day, I performed various roles for Bajwa that I had performed in school and college and some that I would have wanted to do. In his no-nonsense mood, he wasn’t tickled. In one of these, I made him sit on a bench complete with his turban and beard. But imagining him as a girl, I approached him with a large sunflower, and wearing a tapori cap and started a dialogue that I had heard in one of Sunil Dutt’s movies, “Dilo dildaar, gulo gulzaar, ahd-e-bahaar, rango khumaar, film star, mallika-tarunnam, malika-e-jahan….” Before, I could finish with “….roop ki raani, baharon ki mallika…” Bajwa had given up on me as a gone case nut.
The date for staging the play was getting closer and it had come to last one week. Let alone rehearsing the play for a prestigious event, we hadn’t even selected a play. That day Bajwa was so annoyed with me that he could have eaten me alive.
That night, I wrote the script for a three-act-play titled Hamara Drama. Whatever we had done in search and preparation for the play was put in the first two acts. In the last act, Bajwa and I were sitting dejected that we still didn’t have a play and that everything had failed. And then yet another brainwave occurred to me and I tell him, “Why don’t we present our search for a suitable play and a cast as a play…is mein khushi hai, gham hai, bebasi hai, suspense hai, comedy hai, tragedy hai….aur kahin kahin to paagalpan bhi hai…hahahaha…hahahaha..exactly like our navy life..” The play ended there with a freeze shot. Bajwa and I, until the last day, kept adding to the dialogues in order to make them more satirical and comical.
When we went to Cochin for presenting the play, our hearts sank seeing the plays of other establishments. Each one of them had elaborate sets, cast, background music and other props. We had nothing. But, now, at that late stage could do nothing about it.
Ours was the last play on the second day. Each play was to be one hour’s duration with ten minutes given for changing sets. During our preparation time, Bajwa and I were sitting with the audience in uniform. When the curtain opened, we got up from the audience and performed on stage. It was a riot. The audience roared with every dialogue. For example, at one stage, I told Bajwa that I could do the famous Rajesh Khanna’s Anand movie dialogue, “Babu moshaye, ye zindagi ek rang manch hai aur ham sabb ismein kaam karne wali kathputliyan; in kathputliyon ki dore ooper waale ke haath mein hai. Kab, kahan, kaise kis kis ko uthana hai ye koi nahin jaanata…ha, ha, ha…ha, ha, ha..” And Bajwa asked me on stage, “But, what has this got to do with the naval audience?” And then I told him that we could modify it…and I enacted the modified dialogue:
“Babu moshaye, yeh navy ek rang manch hai aur hum sabb is mein kaam karne waale afsar ya sailor. Ham sabaki dore DOP (Directorate of Personnel) ke haath mein hai. Kabb, kaise, kahan kis kis ka transfer ho jaaye yeh koi nahin jaanata..ha, ha, ha…ha, ha, ha...”
I espied C-in-C and his wife in the front row having side-splitting laughs. It was difficult to proceed from one dialogue to the other throughout the play as the laughter and applause won’t die down. No one could believe we could actually present a play, a humorous take on how we did things in the Navy or for that matter in the armed forces.
The jury was unanimous in voting for Hamara Drama as the Best Play and yours truly as the Best Actor.
Some pictures of the play are still there with me but they are lying in my home-station Kandaghat in the baggage yet to be unpacked, after my retirement in Feb 2010. I shall, subsequently, put them up when I visit Kandaghat next. In the meantime, Bajwa could persuade his wife Jaya to search in his baggage and find some pictures (he himself is on his ship at sea). She was able to find one and I am putting it up:
Persuading one of our sailors to showcase his talent in Hamara Drama. The background prop was from the play preceding ours!
Many years later, in the year 2003, I directed the inaugural play in Mulla Auditorium in Mumbai. The Chief of the Naval Staff was the Chief Guest. My son Arjun acted in it. I adapted it from a Moliere’s play and called it Suddenly In The Park. Navy is a life’s drama in which your families are also acting and involved!
I did many other plays. For example, in Peter Shaffer’s farcical play called Black Comedy, I was Schuppanzigh, the German electrician, sent to repair the fuse since the entire play is as if performed in the dark.
After repairing the fuse, I as Schuppanzigh move to the light switch, saying “God said: “Let there be light!” And there was, good people, suddenly — astoundingly — instantaneously — inconceivably — inexhaustibly — inextinguishably and eternally — LIGHT!”
I also directed and acted in Mahesh Dattani’s play on incest called ’30 Days in September’. The fauji audiences are normally used to only two type of plays: comedies and suspense-dramas. We were not sure how the audience would view a serious play on incest. Our C-in-C summed up the response by saying, “If Mahesh Dattani had been present tonight at the staging of his play by this team, he would have really felt proud. I was, of course, the bad guy, the perpetrator of incest. For many months after the staging of the play, women and girls, in naval residential areas would scream and run for cover after seeing me.
The last one I did was in 2007, a Neil Simon play called ‘Come Blow Your Horn’. I also acted as the father of Alan and Buddy Baker. Just before the curtains, Aunt Gussie who was all the while only talked about made her appearance. The only problem was that we hadn’t got anyone to do Aunty’s role. So, after my last appearance as father, I quickly changed my clothes and make up and appeared as Aunt Gussie!
Me as father Baker with my elder son Alan Baker, who lives the life of a playboy.Me as Mr. Baker with Mrs Baker. Our younger son Buddy is seen in the backgroundMe berating the younger son Buddy Baker for having been spoiled under the influence of his elder brother Alan.
In the final scene of this three act play me appearing as Aunt Gussie with Buddy, the spoiled brat
That was true reflection of what Navy is all about; we change roles together with the situation; and, we do absolutely strange roles that people least expect us to do. We don’t ever say we ain’t ready for a particular role.
We also do many roles on the stage but not half as difficult or strange as in real life.
I have already given you a blog – post on a favourite lyricist Raja Mehdi Ali Khan: ‘The Magic Of The Lyrics Of Raja Mehdi Ali Khan’. He paired with the great Music Director Madan Mohan to make some of the most memorable songs of Lata Mangeshkar. His song for the 1946 movie ‘Do Bhai’: Mera sundar sapna toot gaya reminds us that he was capable of deep philosophy and understanding of womanly pain and anguish at a very young age (he wasn’t yet 18 years of age when he wrote the song sung by Geeta Dutt on SD Burman’s music.
The great music director Naushad Ali brought out that two of his ghazals: Aap ki nazaron ne samajha and Hai isi mein pyaar ki aabru, with Madan Mohan‘s music were better than the entire compositions of Naushad!
And yet, not many people are aware of this that Raja Mehdi Ali Khan delved in funny, humorous and satirical Urdu poetry. As an example, I am giving you his nazm: Adib Ki Mehbooba. It is really very humorous. He has used the takhallus (pen names or non de plume) of various poets and writers both in their metaphorical sense as well as their identities to bring out the tale of his failed love.
I have attempted not just a translation of this humorous poem but also have given you the full names and short description and life-span of the poets and writers mentioned.
Please enjoy: Raja Mehdi Ali Khan’s Adib Ki Mehbooba:
Tumhaari ulfat mein harmonium pe Meer ki ghazlen ga raha hoon
Bahattar in mein chhupe hain nashtar jo sab ke sab aazma raha hoon.
In your love I am singing the ghazals of Meer
These have 72 cutters (nashtar) hidden in them that I am trying out all.
Bahut dinon se tumhaare jalwe Khadija Mastoor ho gaye hain,
Hai shukr-e-baari ki saamne apne aaj phir tumako paa raha hoon.
Since many days your splendor has become Khadija Mastoor (Pakistani writer 1927-1982)
But, thank God, I still find you in front of me today.
Lihaf ‘Ismat’ ka o.Dh kar tum fasane Manto ke pa.Dh rahi ho
Pahan ke ‘Bedi’ ka garam coat aaj tumase aankhen mila raha hoon
Wrapping the quilt of Ismat (Chugtai Ismat; Urdu writer 1915-1991), you are reading the tales of Manto (Saadat Hassan Manto; 1912-1955, short-story writer)
I am wearing Bedi’s (Rajinder Singh Bedi) warm coat and looking into your eyes.
Tumhaare ghar Noon Meem Rashid ka le ke aaya sifarshi KHat,
Magar ta.ajjub hai phir bhi tumase nahin main kuchh Faiz pa raha hoon.
I came to your house with a letter of recommendation by Noon Meem Rashid (1910-1975)
But it is surprising that I am not getting any Faiz (success or victory; and also the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz; 1911-1984) from you
Bahut hai sidhi si meri baat na jaane tum kyun nahin samajhati,
Kasam KHuda ki kalaam-e-Ghalib nahin main tumako suna raha hoon.
My talk is straight, why do you not understand it
By God, I am not making you listen to some (difficult) poetry of Ghalib (1797-1869).
Tumhaari zulf-e-siyaah pe tangiid kis se likhwaayun tum hi bolo, Shri Ibadat Barelvi ko main taar de kar bula raha hoon
The criticism (tangiid) of your black tresses (zulf-e-siyaah) who should I ask to write,
I am sending a telegram to call Shri Ibadat Barelvi (1920-1999)
Main tum pe hoon Jaan Nisar Akhtar, kasam hai Munshi Fida Ali ki,
Bahut dinon se main tum pe Sahir se jaadu tone kara raha hoon.
I am Jaan Nisar Akhtar (poet and lyricist 1914 – 1976) on you, I swear by Munshi Fida Ali (a Lucknow poet),
Since many days I am trying Sahir’s (Sahir Ludhainvi 1921 – 1980) magic and black magic on you.
Agar ho tum Hajara to phir mujh se mil ke Masroor kyun nahin ho
Tumhaare aage Upendra Nath Ashq ban ke aansu baha raha hoon
If you are Hajara (abandoned; also feminist Pakistani poet Hajara Masroor 1930-2012), then why are you not happy (Masroor) upon meeting me,
I am shedding tears in front of you like Upendra Nath Ashq (novelist 1910-1996).
Haseen ho zehra-jamaal ho tum mujhe sata ke nihal ho tum
Tumhaare ye zulm Qurrat-ul-Ain ko bataane jaa raha hoon
You are beautiful, you are like Zahra Jamal (Dr Zahra Jamal – leading protagonist of international Women’s right), you are joyous (nihal) after oppressing me,
I am going to Qurrat-ul-Ain (Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder, female novelist 1927-2007) to tell about your tyranny (zulm).
Meri mohabbat ki dastaan sun ke ro pa.De Josh Malsiyani,
Sukha ke pankhe se un ke aansu abhi wahan se main aa raha hoon.
After hearing the tale (dastaan) of my love, Josh Malsiyani (poet, 1883-1976) was in tears,
I am just returning after blowing dry his tears by a fan.
Meri tabaahi ki chhap denge Naqsh ka ek KHaas number, Tufail sahib ke paas saare musavvade le ke jaa raha hoon.
The imprint of my wreck shall be given in a special number by Naqsh (84 years old poet and lyricist from Lyallpur in Pakistan)
I am taking all manuscripts to Tufail sahib (Ibn Tufail – writer, novelist, philosopher 1105-1185)
Vazir Agha pathan hain saath saath yaaron ke yaar bhi hain,
Pakad ke who tum ko peet denge main kal unhe saath la raha hoon.
Vazir Agha (Pakistani poet and writer 1922-2010) is a pathan and also friend of friends,
He will catch you and beat you; I shall arrive with him tomorrow.
Hakim Yousuf Ali ne jab meri nabz dekhi to ro ke bole: Jigar hai zakhmi tabah gurde yeh baat tum se chhupa raha hoon.
Doctor Yousuf Ali (Sir Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the famous scholar who translated Quran into English 1872-1953) when he felt my pulse, he cried and said:
Your Jigar (Liver; also famous poet Jigar Moradabadi 1890 – 1960) is wounded, kidneys are ruined; this fact I am hiding from you.
Malihabad aaj jaa raha hoon main Josh laa.un ki aam laa.un,
Tumhaare hontho pe gham ki maujon ko dekh kar tilmila raha hoon.
I am going to Malihabad (the town of famous Pakistani poet Josh Malihabadi 1894-1982) today; should I bring Josh or mangoes,
I am agitated to see the waves of sorrow on your lips.
Fasana-e-ishq mukhatsar hai qasam KHuda ki na bore hona, Firaq Gorakhpuri ki ghazalen nahin main tum ko suna raha hoon.
The tale of love is short, I swear by God, please don’t get bored,
I am not reciting to you (the long) ghazals of Firaq Gorakhpuri (1896-1982)
Meri mohabbat ki daastaan ko gadhe ki mat sarguzisht samajho,
Main Krishan Chander nahin hoon yakeen tum ko dila raha hoon.
Do not think of the tale of my love as a donkey’s biography,
I am not Krishan Chander (Urdu writer of short stories & novels 1914-1977) I can assure you that.
Pilaao aankhon se taaki mujh ko kuchh ‘aal-e-ahmed-suruur’ aaye,
Bahut hain gham aashiqi ke bina piye dagmagaa raha hoon.
Make me drink from your eyes so that I should get Ale Ahmed Suroor (Intoxication; as well as famous poet 1911-2002)
I have a lot of sorrows of love, without drinking I am ambling.
Today I attended my sixth Annual General Meeting and lunch of the Navy Foundation, Mumbai Chapter. Once again, I was reminded of this old song by Elton John titled ‘Talking Old Soldiers’. When you read the lyrics and at the end of it listen to Elton John sing the song, you would realise why I get reminded of this:
Why hello, say can I buy you another glass of beer
Well thanks a lot that’s kind of you, it’s nice to know you care
These days there’s so much going on
No one seems to want to know
I may be just an old soldier to some
But I know how it feels to grow old
Yeah that’s right, you can see me here most every night
You’ll always see me staring at the walls and at the lights
Funny I remember oh it’s years ago I’d say
I’d stand at that bar with my friends who’ve passed away
And drink three times the beer that I can drink today
Yes I know how it feels to grow old
I know what they’re saying son
There goes old man Joe again
Well I may be mad at that I’ve seen enough
To make a man go out his brains
Well do they know what it’s like
To have a graveyard as a friend
`Cause that’s where they are boy, all of them
Don’t seem likely I’ll get friends like that again
Well it’s time I moved off
But it’s been great just listening to you
And I might even see you next time I’m passing through
You’re right there’s so much going on
No one seems to want to know
So keep well, keep well old friend
And have another drink on me
Just ignore all the others you got your memories
You got your memories
Elton John wrote the lyrics together with Bernie Taupin. Whilst the entire song has lyrics that invoke nostalgia and many old ‘faujis‘ would identify with these, here are some words that are said in regret:
No one seems to wants to know…
That’s what happens when you retire from the armed forces. You join a wonderful territory called Oblivion where no one disturbs you. You are by yourself.
We are having an endless debate in the media and elsewhere about something called OROP (One Rank One Pension). As usual, both political fronts, ie, NDA (led by BJP) and UPA (led by Congress) are vying with each other to bring out, rightly or wrongly (mostly wrongly, I am sure) how the other front has been responsible for the delay in implementing this for the last many decades. Horrible jokes and cartoons are going around. One of these is about a veteran going through a graveyard and suddenly held by his leg by a hand coming out of the grave and a ghostly voice asking, “OROP aa gaya kyaa?” (Has the OROP (finally) arrived?)
(Pic courtesy: exairforce.blogspot.com)
Veterans in my Facebook Group called ‘Humour In And Out Of Uniform’ (HIAOOU) routinely bring out how soldiers are respected in every other country except in India wherein everyone pays lip-service but leaves them in their exclusive territory ‘Oblivion‘.
With this background, lets take stock of yet another AGM of the Navy Foundation; I am sure it is like any other ‘Talking Old ‘Faujis‘ Forum. We didn’t touch the OROP since adequate heat is already being generated about it elsewhere; I believe the Energy companies are seriously contemplating whether they can light up a few cities by converting such heat into electricity. Our most important issue was another four letter acronym called ECHS (Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme); this joke brings us as much mirth as OROP. Indeed, whilst pensioners post 2006 are indeed a happy lot as compared to pre-2006 period, ECHS is one issue that has all of us as hapless victims. ECHS brings home the sad fact to all of us that there are Rules and Regulations and beyond them more Rules and Regulations and beyond them more. The other ‘R’ that you are looking for: ‘Relief’, that is, is lost in these other R’s and R’s. There are experts who have figured out some of these rules and regulations. For others, ECHS rules and regulations act as an index of the health of the ex-servicemen; if you can figure out majority of these, you are fit and do not require any treatment!
Every AGM starts with ECHS and ends with ECHS. The future is bright. Once all the empanelment is complete and the latest R’s and R’s implemented, ECHS would start being beneficial and less tedious, if not downright insulting. Officers who are still in service and somewhat responsible for ECHS invariably assure us that they are doing everything within their means to ensure ECHS becomes effective. However, as veterans we must understand that one, nothing is in their hand and two, whatever little powers they had to purchase medicines have also been usurped by the bureaucrats by a latest order dated 30th April 2015.
Where is humour in this? Well, it is in the fact that about ten of the veterans were given mementoes for having become octogenarian. This means that despite the inadequacies of ECHS veterans do live long. Perhaps the long wait for OROP doesn’t let them go. Many veterans would have become seriously ill but knowing that they would then be at the mercy of ECHS keeps them feeling fit.
What are the other earth-shaking issues of the Talking Old ‘Faujis‘? Here is a really important one (Ha!Ha!): Auto-rickshaws should be allowed by patients visiting ECHS clinics right up to the clinics and not stopped at the gate! This point would be discussed with the Command authorities to understand their point of view and if possible be implemented in due course of time.
Another very significant (Ha!Ha!) point was brought out that to call widows of ex-servicemen as widows is rather demeaning and the veterans must think of a more respected word to describe their status! Someone suggested ‘Wives of Late Veterans’. This was seriously contested by some veterans who arrived late for the AGM and had missed most of the proceedings. They said they weren’t always late but hadn’t reckoned for the traffic conditions. Hence, to single them out for reproach wasn’t called for! Over drinks, I made a suggestion that Hinglish could be used to describe the widows of veterans. Since the retired officer is called Veteran; perhaps his widow could be called Veterani.
The best point of the AGM was a gem indeed:
The venerable secretary of the Navy Foundation announced that arrangements have been worked out with the Command that when a veteran conks off, two sailors in uniform would be deputed by the Command to lay wreath on his/her mortal remains; and, in case he/she is a gallantry award winner, the Command would arrange for a Guard of Honour at his/her funeral.
The ‘R’ of Relief that eludes the ECHS has finally been provided in the form of a wreath and bugle at the death of a veteran.
Wreath Laying Ceremony for victims of INS Sindhuratna Mishap (Pic courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com)
There was a Ghazal Singer who sang during the drinks and lunch. Most ‘Talking Old ‘Faujis’ however preferred the sound of guzzle (of beer and gin) rather than of ghazal.
We await the next AGM and Annual Lunch for more of ‘Talking Old ‘Faujis‘. We are secure in our knowledge that at least we have earned a flower-wreath after decades of being in the Navy. My former CO on Ganga used to say, “In the Navy, brickbats travel upwards; bouquets travel downwards.” After thirty years, I understood what he was trying to say.
This article is in good humour and not a punch below the belt. Some of my very good friends have been at one time or the other posted to the Personnel Branch. Read on.
This article is a tribute to the Personnel Branch guys in the Naval Headquarters; the demi-gods and gods. If the Army and Air Force friends and even civilians see some similarity with what they have, it is not just coincidental; it must be universal. Post retirement from the Navy, I am working in a corporate now and I can assure you the HR guys here are the all powerful, sought after, God’s own people and creme de la crème.
Their reasoning appears to us a little cockeyed (since we are not used to it). But, there is always method in their madness. For example, lets say you are looking for a transfer out of Vizag. The correct approach with your appointer (it never fails) would be: “Sir, just called to thank you for sending me to Vizag. We have just moved into ‘A’ type accommodation, children have finally been admitted to Timpany School after many years of waiting, and wife has found a job. I was wondering if you would keep me here for a few more years….” By the end of the day, your transfer orders, by signal would be issued.
These guys are full of empathy. Indeed, they would never have been appointed in the Personnel Branch if they hadn’t displayed this trait somewhere or the other. In the Executive Branch of the Indian Navy, most of them were (during my time in the Navy) from the Navigation and Direction branch since ’empathy’ requires great navigational and directional skills. Just to give an example, in May 1984, my father died at the age of 56 years in a jeep accident. So, I sought a transfer closer home, ie, New Delhi itself. I wrote to my appointer and since they advertise it ad-infinitum, called on him in his office in Naval Headquarters. He responded with great empathy that he felt for me. And then he added with greater empathy (for his branch type, that is) that his analysis showed that 57.67 per cent officers lost one or the other parent at my age and that if Naval Headquarters were to transfer all of them to New Delhi, it would be like opening an orphanage. Since then, I have never stopped marvelling at the first four letters of the word analysis.
(Organogram courtesy: indiannavy,nic.in)
It appears that the two great principles of life that P branch people follow as gospel truths are:
1. People can always learn on-job and anything at all. Hence, it won’t make any difference whether you put square pegs in round holes or vice-versa. P branch is like the other P business: Police, that is; the customer is always wrong.
2. No matter whatever wretched place you transfer people to, they will eventually get so used to it that they won’t like to be transferred out from the place they didn’t want to be transferred in to.
P branch people listen to so many stories that they become great story tellers themselves. The most efficient of them have five stories to tell for every one of yours. There was one who became the Chief of Personnel and he was a great story-teller. So, if you ever went to him telling how all hell had broken loose at your home or in the ship, he would, in great style, open his table-drawer, take out one of his self-published books named Stephen’s Violin or some other musical instrument. He would vouch for it that one reading and all your problems – whilst they may not go away – would become insignificant. The guy who told you how to get rid of your severe headache by hitting yourself hard on the toe with a hammer was certainly a P branch guy.
How can you make out a P branch guy? Do they have special insignia? No, nothing of that sort; they don’t need anything special; they are special. For one thing, they use the pronoun we in their speech very often; eg, “We are looking at your peculiar problem with your best interest in our mind. And soon (mentally thinking of one or two years), we will have it behind us (and then it becomes our successors’ problem!). Secondly, they are always invited for promotion (stripe-wetting) parties on two counts: one, they make it appear like they are somehow responsible for the poor guy’s promotion; and two, promotion entails transfer and it is in the hands of these worthies. So, keeping them in good humour at all times is the done thing.
A rough depiction of the HR processes followed by the P branch people (Pic courtesy: www.123rf.com)
Can you guess as to which is the word that they have adapted their life to? The word is called flux. So, they are very much in control if they can keep maximum people in a state of flux. Contented people don’t even remember God; however, discontented, dissatisfied, and distressed people remember their Maker and Appointer until the three d’s last. The P branch people, therefore, keep you thus until it becomes a habit with you to remember them. Do you remember the Jenson & Nicholson paints ad: whenever you see colour, think of us. It is the same with P branch people guys: whenever you are in __it, think of us.
What else do they do in Naval Headquarters other than keeping the entire naval community in a state of flux? Well, they attend meetings and conferences. So if you are in so much __it that you can’t breathe, and you are desperately phoning up your appointer, anticipating the nature of the __it you are in, he doesn’t take your call for the next several days, he being busy in a meeting or conference until the __it settles down on its own.
Your ship or establishment is down to barest minimum officers and now out of two that you have, one has been sent to Timbuktu, you don’t know how to sail your ship or run your establishment. You are desperately trying to raise ACOP (HRD) on phone but he is attending meetings or conferences or both in India or/and abroad. Finally, when you get to him after ten sunrises and sunsets, the very first thing that he tells you is this: “Oh, please don’t tell me about manpower shortages”; as if, being ACOP (HRD) the only reasonable thing to discuss with him would be the state of underwater hull or firing rates of ship’s main weapons.
The P branch Johnnies have perfected the art of poking fun at all and sundry. For almost four decades when I was in the Navy, year after year, a P branch team would visit the Commands and give presentations on ACRs or Annual Confidential Reports. Besides PJs on pen – pictures such as “He would go far; the farther the better”, they would bring out hilarious mismatches between the pen-pictures and PP (Promotion Potential) points or vice-versa. If you ever sat in the front few rows during these presentations, you had no choice but to laugh appreciatively lest they should notice your lack of enthusiasm at their brilliant humour and transfer you to Timbuktu or neglect giving you or your ship’s officers and sailors their due awards and honours. By the way, there is hardly any officer appointed to P branch who hasn’t conferred upon himself an award during his tough tenure.
Changing Personnel Policies as frequently as Imelda M used to change her shoes is part of the flux plan that I discussed earlier. The joke going around in P branch is that when a senior officer retires or is transferred from the branch, during his farewell party, they handover to him all his policies as a farewell gift.
Two anecdotes about them before I close. One, there was this Flight Commander on Himgiri who had always been writing his first choice of transfer as Port Blair knowing pretty well that that effectively kept him from being transferred there. One fine day his transfer actually came to Port Blair because his appointer – hold your breath – took pity on him. He cursed and cursed.
Then there was this case of Jaggi Bedi who was CO Ranvir at that time (he retired as a Vice Admiral and C-in-C West), attending a Combined Fleet party on Ganga in Kochi after a theatre level exercise. For about half an hour after the party started we bemoaned that no stewards came our way with either drinks or small-eats. JSB too was upset. But afterwards we noticed that a bevy of stewards stood around him with drinks and eats. We enquired from him the cause of this quick and welcome transformation. He said that having got fed up, he let it slip out that his next appointment, after handing over command of Ranvir, was to be DOP (Director of Personnel). And then the drinks and eats started flowing.
