Category: Navy – Nostalgia

If you are amused at the title of this post being similar to the 17th century poet John Milton’s famous last line in the sonnet ‘When I Consider How My Light is Spent’, the similarity, I hasten to add, is intentional. As we go along, you will understand.

The business end of the navy is at sea and that is where you want to be; that’s where there is life, order, sanity and some justification for being what you are: a sea-warrior. However much you dislike, you can’t be at sea all the time and have to serve ashore some time or the other. And whilst ashore, you have to either serve at headquarters or deal with one. That’s the time you learn, if you are doing it for the first time, how different navy life can be; you acquire a totally different perspective and environment (Earlier, I have written two articles on the subject: ‘The Tail Wags The Dog And How!’ and ‘The Tail Wags The Dog And How! – Part II’)

Ten days ago, the Navy was in the news for having appointed a Flag Officer Delhi Area (FODA) without the consent of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). MoD, unlike what people think, is actually a fighting or combat organisation. It is at all times at war with the armed forces. Here, however, it patted itself on the back (something that it has mastered over years) for having caught the Navy on the wrong foot. The Navy justified the appointment, but, insisted that FODA is now to be called Flag Officer Administration:

“We required such an office as we are very soon going to start work on the construction of Nau Sena Bhawan which will be a big task and otherwise also, the workload had gone up quite considerably in the national capital,” senior Navy sources explained. (The pic on top is of the foundation stone laying ceremony on 20 Aug 14).

The tail is now considerably larger and the poor dog at sea (sea-dog) is ready to be wagged violently and continuously.

In the Naval Headquarters at New Delhi the phrase Navy is not a vocation but a way of life is not entirely reflective of the true picture; for most it is a nine-to-five office job. The gap between theory and practice there is even greater than between the peninsular India and the land-locked capital. One of my course-mates, for example, landed up at NHQ immediately after undergoing the Staff Course at DSSC, Wellington (Nilgiris). In the staff course, he was converted into a Sahib with such theoretical things as Whitehall system of filing and other norms of handling correspondence. At the end of his first day, as he approached me in my ramshackle office (I had joined about a year before him and hence knew my way around there), he had tears in his eyes. Let alone not being able to locate a single file as per the Whitehall system, he was unable to find a chair or table for himself.

They also serve who are in Naval Headquarters!

I remember how amused I myself was when I attended my first meeting at NHQ on the all important topic of ‘The use of Hemp ropes on board ships’. The meeting was to start at 2:30 PM immediately after lunch. By about 3 PM everyone had trickled in except Commander A Singh. The chairman of the meeting, a senior Commodore, waited for everyone without once losing his temper. On the ships, he would have taken everyone’s pants off for keeping him waiting even for five minutes. Now, here, he was just drumming his table and asking, “Should we wait for A Singh or start the meeting?” and the senior officers around him kept saying, “Lets wait for A Singh”. By 3:15 PM, the Commodore’s limit of patience had been reached and he said, “Lets not wait for A Singh anymore. Lets start the meeting. He can join in when he comes.” Everyone acquiesced with this decision. The Commodore began the meeting by welcoming everyone and then he asked for someone to read out the minutes of the last meeting. Everyone said that there was a problem here since the minutes had not been circulated by A Singh (In NHQ, I quickly learnt that the absent member is to be blamed for everything. After leaving the Navy, when I joined the corporate sector, once I attended a meeting in the North Block (the business end of the government; the MoD and the armed forces headquarters are in the South Block) on the issue of ‘Security of SBMs’ (Single Buoy Moorings; whereat great percentage of crude oil is received from VLCCs or Very Large Crude Carriers). The chairman kept saying that this security had been handed over to XYZ. No one had any objection to it. I was quick to notice that the XYZ representatives weren’t attending the meeting. When I pointed this out, it was explained to me that it was deliberate since if the XYZ reps were to attend the meeting, they would have serious objections to it; now, they would learn of the decision through the minutes of the meeting. Naturally, in Naval Headquarters, we quickly learn the ways of our civilian counterparts rather than making them learn our disciplined and orderly ways). After an hour of the meeting on the subject of ‘Use of hemp ropes on ships’ the meeting was called off since A Singh, the most important member of the meeting hadn’t arrived.

They also serve who are in Naval Headquarters!

If you are wondering what I alluded to by the ways of the civilians in the last paragraph, I would like to point out that these are not just to be seen at the top levels. At the ground level (almost all the secretarial staff in the directorates is civilians), it is to be seen to be believed. My office clerk, for example, vanished for 114 days without informing me and I had to do most of my typing myself. When I pointed this to the DOA (Directorate of Administration) guys, they said due to manpower shortages, no relief could be provided. How about taking action against the clerk? They said this would be possible when the clerk would report back on duty. There is never any urgency for anything at the headquarters; things get sorted out on their own.

What about the gallant sailors who do wonders on the ships, who produce results against all odds? Well, in Naval Headquarters, these are mostly from North Indian states who are on home or closer-to-home postings. They are, therefore, least likely to complain about anything even if asked to fetch canteen items or movie tickets.

If I have painted a somewhat dismal environment of Naval Headquarters, I hasten to correct the view that great and difficult things actually happen at the headquarters. Whilst the Navy at sea is only preparing or training to fight against the enemy, in Naval Headquarters, the guys are actually fighting to obtain things for the Navy from the Ministry or ministries. How important this exercise is can be made out from the awards and honours list: a large percentage of those serving in Naval Headquarters find their names in the list.

They also serve who are in Naval Headquarters!

A few years back, when I was still in the Navy, the citation of a Commodore for Nausena Medal (Devotion to Duty) actually read that: “He obtained sanction for ‘ABC’ from the ministry against all odds, thereby accomplishing something beyond the ordinary call of duty.”

The Navy is a combat service, indeed; the MoD ensures we stay that way.

If the title suggests to you that we went around with our Kodak or Agfa cameras (the prevalent models in the 1970s) to take pictures of our favourite film-stars like Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Vyjayanthimala or Nutan, you are as far away from the mark as someone who thinks pineapple is an apple-like fruit that grows on the pine trees. Worse, if you think, we – the navy officers – had decided to get rid of the bad guys or the villains in the Indian movies from Jeevan to Pran to Amjad Khan in Sholay and carried guns for that specific purpose, once again, you are wrong.

Shooting Stars is simply the process of bringing down to the horizon the images with the help of a marine sextant (see picture) of some of the 57 navigational stars given in the nautical almanac at the times of morning and evening nautical twilights (when both the stars and the horizon can be seen by the naked eye), thus measuring their exact angle with the earth’s horizon in degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds. The idea was to fix the position of a ship at sea, far from shore objects, in comparison to the known position of some of these 57 navigational stars. Naturally, in order to fix the position of the ship with some accuracy, one would have to get more than two bearing lines. The accuracy and the fastness of the observations would ensure that most of the bearing lines (from more than two stars) would meet at a point and that would be the fixed position of the ship. Without boring you with complex details, this in essence is the theory of the celestial navigation, also known as astronavigation. During our formative years in the navy, all of us had to learn the intricacies of the astronavigation.

What about daytime? you will ask me. Well, one would shoot the sun! Aha, but sun is only one, you will persist. Yes, thank God, it is only one. However, if you measure the angle of the sun at different times of the day, allow for the changes in dead-reckoning (or DR) positions of the ship, you will get as many bearing lines as the number of times you shoot the sun, and then, once again, you can fix the ship. Fair enough, you will now ask, but, what exactly is a dead reckoning (DR) position. If you ain’t seeing the stars until now, a DR position is:

the process of calculating one’s current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course. The corresponding term in biology, used to describe the processes by which animals update their estimates of position or heading, is path integration.

I remember the time, when I underwent my higher-command course with the army at Mhow, and we joked about army in the mountains advancing with the speed of the mules (they provide logistic support to the army and no army can reach a place or sustain itself unless and until the mules carrying the logistics have cought up). We used to have any number of cartoons about the pongos (naval slang for army infantry guys) and mules. Little did the army guys know that some of our own methods also originated from the animals!

If you are with me so far, with or without stars in your eyes, you would then ask me if we already have the DR position, why to then further fix the ship? Well, DR positions are nowhere near being accurate. As with the animals, you would have to track all the various paths and speeds that the animal took and then arrive at his/her final position after a few hours. First of all it would depend upon the accuracy of the initial position and then on the accuracy of measurement of all the courses and speeds and drifts due to currents and winds and then arrive at the final position.

For example, lets say, the three or more plotted lines if they don’t meet at one point, they would form between them a figure called cocked-hat. Most often than not, all of us busying ourselves in astronavigation would land up with more cocked-hats than in the complete wardrobe of, say, Nelson.

 

Hence, astronavigation was for us the process of finding the ship’s position more accurately than the dead-reckoning (DR) position. A final question that you would ask me is that weren’t there modern technological means available to fix the ship? Well, there were, but, we were to learn astronavigation just-in-case in the same manner as we kept learning sails and masts even after the advent of steam-ships.

Finally, I might as well tell you that being at sea is very much different from anything that you can imagine. You have no idea of how lost you can get after spending a few hours or days at sea. All directions appear the same and there is nothing to differentiate one from the other. The only analogy that I can give you is the one given by my armoured course mates (how the poor guys miss out on becoming the army chiefs unless it is by accident!) in desert warfare; at times you have no idea of whether you are coming or going. Anyway, let me add that this confusion of being at sea has led Fleet Navigating Officers (the most qualified navigators in the fleet) of leading an entire fleet into waters and even harbours different from the ones that they had intended (as an example, please read: ‘Poor Communicator Had The Last Laugh’). In a major tactical exercise at sea, as another example, when the fleet at sea was divided into Red (enemy) and Blue (own) forces, two ships of the Blue forces encountered each other after going on different tracks and shot missiles at each other thinking of the other as Red ship.

A navy officer, of my era or earlier, would therefore be well versed with recognising navigational stars at sea and would rattle out star names such as Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Pollux, Aldebaran, Capella, Spica, Arcturus and the Belt of Orion simply by looking at the sky.

Other than that, let me assure you, there is a vast difference between the theory and the practice. For those of you who think it is ancient and outdated, let me tell you that the most modern navy in the world – the US Navy – discontinued (in part only) celestial navigation being taught to its officers in formative years only. And what is the part that they discontinued? Well, the part of physically calculating and drawing bearing lines ( a 22 step process that we all learnt). Instead, nowadays, the shooting star data (the physical data) is fed into a computer and a fix is obtained almost instantly. There are clearly advantages in astronavigation such as its signals cannot be jammed or stopped (unlike that of a radar or even satellite), it is globally available (stars and sun are available everywhere) and the process doesn’t give out any signals that can be detected by the enemy.

However, the inaccuracies of the process (two people are required at the same time to shoot stars: one for bringing the star to the horizon and the other for accurately noting the time of the observation with a chronometer) are many such as inaccurately calibrated sextant or chronometer, great inaccuracies in the last known position, misidentified stars, horizon not being clear due to many reasons (such as choppy seas) and inaccuracies in calculating and plotting. And these led to some hilarious situations at sea.

One that we had often heard was about these young Royal Navy officers trying out celestial navigation in the Thames river in the olden days. After the position calculated by them was plotted on the chart, the Navigator told them gravely that they would have to remove their hats as the ship had landed up in the middle of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

In our case too, many a times the fix was plotted on the land. Minutes and even hours of shooting stars or the sun, calculating and plotting, would be of no use to the ship.

During my higher command course with the army, the only use for the navy that my army course mates found was to help them in their operations on land. Little did they know how often we had been helping them during the course of astronavigation by landing our ships just next to where they were busy fighting land battles!

 

Submariners are a class apart. They are cooler than the arctic ice that you saw in the movie Ice Station Zebra in which Rock Hudson played Commander James Ferraday, Captain of the US attack submarine USS Tigerfish. Some of you who saw the movie would recall that the movie was ostensibly about rescuing British personnel on a drifting ice weather station in the arctic but actually about a classified intelligence mission. There was this scene in the movie when Commander Ferraday welcomes ‘Mr. Jones‘, the British intelligence agent on board by telling him, “Here on this boat, we are very informal. Everyone is known by his first name. My first name is ‘Captain’.”  How cool that sounded. Well, submariners are like that.

Before they join the branch, there is a special psychology and psychiatrist test for them to qualify; for, if they ain’t the cool type, amongst other attributes, they can commit fatal mistakes in the closed confines of a submarine (In the F class of submarines, for example, the sailor on watch in the DG compartment didn’t have space enough to stand erect). Our famous tall submariner is Admiral VS Shekhawat. His bunk was extended by more than a foot on the submarine so that he could at least sleep properly. He was my CO on a ship and he was cooler than any cucumber.

Anyway, I hope you got the point about the submariners being the coolest of the cats.

What do all of us in the Navy do when we are not at sea? You would expect us to be enjoying life (“Coolex” as the navy men say it; the suffix ‘ex’ is used for exercises. Hence, TACEX would be a tactical exercise. In the same manner, ‘Coolex‘ would mean an exercise in cooling one’s heels!) or twiddling our thumbs. Far from it. Half of us are busy writing reports of the exercises done at sea (most of us return ashore bleary-eyed since the naval authorities are convinced that the time at sea is very costly for the nation and every minute must be made use of). The other half is given to such tasks as the ones ashore should have been doing but being overworked, they have to reluctantly pass it on to the people on the ships after they have enjoyed themselves doing nothing at sea.

One of the tasks given to me when I was commanding my boat Vipul was to conduct a Board of Inquiry into circumstances leading to an Assistant Logistic Officer (ALO) by the name of Lieutenant Devgun having walked away with Rupees 33 Lakhs from the accounts of the Submarine Base in Mumbai (COMCOS (West)). I was one of the members (a BoI normally has three members including the President). Our President was then Captain (later Rear Admiral) Kochhar, CO of the carrier Vikrant. And then we had a Logistic Officer, Commander Anand, who had all rules and regulations concerning accounts at the back of his hand.

To complete the background, I must mention that the rear wall of any BoI and Court Martial room has to have a picture of the President of India in his capacity as the Supreme Commander of the armed forces.

As we commenced the BoI, we realised that the cool submariners had left everything to the super cool Devgun. The Logistic Officer, Devgun’s immediate boss, for example, had become an expert at solving crosswords since he totally trusted his assistant Devgun to handle accounts, cash, money warrant, ledgers, and locking unlocking of the money safe held in his personal custody. All the others in the Base were equally cool about trusting Devgun with even surprise muster of accounts. He not just maintained Imprest Account but others, busy as they were, coolly disposed off even the handling of their Non-Public Fund accounts to him. The more we went into their coolness, the more we realised that anything and everything had been left to the man with a gun and the Hindi name for god in his name.

Indeed, the President of the BoI mentioned during one of the tea-breaks conjectured as to why couldn’t they have madee him the COMCOS (Commodore Commanding Submarines) since Devgun virtually did everything as a Lieutenant; and, he had risen to this rank from being a sailor?

More and more skeletons came out of the submariners’ cupboards as we took up one thread or the other. As an example, lets say there was a party at the Submarine Base. Who do you think did the local purchase of things required for the party? Well, you have easily guessed it; the cool submariners’ most trusted officer Devgun did it and made underhand money there too (as if 33 Lakh rupees (a huge sum during those days) wasn’t enough). Finally, we decided that we would have to restrict the scope of the BoI since it was otherwise becoming gargantuan with no end in sight. We informed the command headquarters accordingly.

One day, one of the witnesses (a woman) brought out that Devgun was also running a Chit Fund with the promise of making everyone rich. Whilst her evidence was being recorded, we had a tea-break. During the tea-break, the President enquired from the lady stenographer given to us to record the proceedings (in shorthand) (she was a steno at the submarine base itself) about this Chit Fund. She mentioned that many women employees of the Base had given him money for the Chit Fund so as to become rich. She also shyly suggested that many had even illicit relations with him.

On an impulse, the President BoI asked her if she too had lent money to him for the Chit Fund. She lowered her eyes and nodded.

After she went out, the President asked if we should remove the President’s picture from the rear wall and put up that of Devgun because he was the only one who had succeeded in even making women to pay for the fun he had.

Aftermath

After months of the BoI, once, by sheer accident, Devgun was caught and they put him in custody in a cell whilst awaiting court-martial. It is customary to put the personnel from the same unit as guards as well as officers to keep a watch and so the cool submariners guarded Devgun in sharp contrast to how he used to guard their interests in the past.

After being in the cell for a day or two, he mentioned to the cool officer on duty that both he and the officer could take a break and paint the town red. His I-Card and wallet were hence given back to him by this cool officer and as promised, Devgun took him to the apartment of a woman of ill repute. She lived on a higher floor in a multi-story building. Devgun handed over his I-Card, wallet and gold-chain etc to the officer waiting down there in his jeep whilst he went to have fun (as John Milton famously said: They also serve who sit in the jeep and wait). After 30 minutes or so Devgun emerged and told the officer that she was waiting for him. So now it was the turn of the officer to give him his I-Card, wallet etc whilst he (the officer) too went to taste the paradise.

That was the last that was seen of Devgun!

Kya Cool Hain Hum?!

It is surprising that those who start on a common platform with a common vocabulary, culture and manners (say NDA or National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, near Pune in Maharashtra) soon get absorbed in their service ethos as soon as they join their individual services: Army, Navy and the Air Force.

The expression or phrase: Good Lady or Lady Wife is typically Indian Army officers’ (males) way of addressing their wives. Now of course I am used to it but there was a time when I first heard it and decided that it was the equivalent of the expression “I have a bad headache” since even that expression suggests that there must be some people who have good headache too. Likewise, I am yet to meet a person who introduces his wife as a Bad Woman or Coarse Wife. One would, therefore, conclude that Good Lady or Lady Wife is an overkill as much as the overkill in the expression: bad headache. When you say you have a headache (without suffixing it with good or bad), I am sure people don’t automatically assume that you are having a rollicking time and that a headache is something worth having. Coming from the army wherein they have a penchant for abbreviating even short words like Night into Ni and Enemy into En (Please read: Bikini Speech, a piece I wrote when I was undergoing my Higher Command Course with the army)), it is certainly an exaggeration.

In the Navy, a ship is normally referred to as She. Here is a ready-made explanation from Glossophilia:

“A ship is called a she because there is always a great deal of bustle around her; there is usually a gang of men about; she has a waist and stays; it takes a lot of paint to keep her good-looking; it is not the initial expense that breaks you, it is the upkeep; she can be all decked out; it takes an experienced man to handle her correctly; and without a man at the helm, she is absolutely uncontrollable. She shows her topsides, hides her bottom and, when coming into port, always heads for the buoys.”

Of course, that is the explanation that is often to be found in the folk-lore with the navies around the world and no one cares to remember that the Latin and the Sanskrit words for ship are similar: Navis and Naav and that both these are feminine. Nautical slang is not just folk-lore; we use it extensively on board as much as authors like Joseph Conrad did. Hence, a Lady’s Hole was a dainty niche in the stern of the ship wherein a light used to be kept for ships astern of her to steer by. Many others referred to Lady’s Hole as the place wherein a gun ammunition used to be kept.

However, be as it may, in the Navy, a ship is a lady and it requires Good Men to keep her looking comely and fighting-fit. We have so much respect for the ladies that we salute with palm inwards so as not to show our dirty palms to them as a result of keeping the lady clean and proper (the custom having originated in the Royal Navy when, during the Queen’s visit aboard a ship, a deck-hand engaged in manning the tarred lines of the ship, saluted her with his dirty palm facing away from the Queen, as a token of respect).

What about the ceremony of launching a ship by a lady breaking a bottle of wine on the bows of the ship? This practice originated from the religious ceremony of baptism of infants and by late 18^th century, this custom of  breaking a bottle of wine on the ships bows as she was launched became a standard practice.

A Princess of the House of Hanover, then the ruling House of England, was  asked to sponsor one of the ships of the Navy. This became the equivalent of the Royal Army’s tradition of patronage for their regiments. Unfortunately, the Princess threw the bottle with more energy than accuracy and it struck one of the spectators, causing severe injuries to him who subsequently claimed damages from the Admiralty. To avoid a repetition, the Admiralty instituted the protocol of attaching a cord to the bottle.

We, in the Indian Navy, did away with the bottle of wine and introduced the tradition of breaking a coconut on the bows by a lady to launch a ship.

Thus, in naval traditions, ladies are associated with the ships from their launch onwards. When a lady joins the naval family as a wife, a coffee-table book is presented to her with the title: Welcome Young Lady. In the opening paragraph of the book, she is reminded of the fact that for a navy man, his ship (a she at that) happens to be his first love and the Young Lady ought to keep that in mind. Indeed, many of the naval wives, jokingly complain that their husbands spend more time with the lady (she) at sea than the lady at home.

Even at that no naval lady is prepared for the gaffe that was unwittingly cracked by one of the officers (not well versed in the nuances of the English language) thanking his host thus: I thank you from the bottom of my heart (at this stage he suddenly remembered his wife beside him and added) and from my wife’s bottom too.

Another one, stepping off the brow (gangplank) on to the ship, on an evening, introduced the Officer of the Day to his wife and vice-versa by just pointing to the two in turns and saying: “The OOD, the wife”.

It used to be a male world for months and years at sea, away from the land where the ladies and women abound. Irrespective of the saying that a sailor has a girl or a woman in every port, the poor guy was by himself and with his male counterparts at sea. Hence, calling a ship a “she” was not just endearing but also signified the dependent relationship that he had with the ship that sustained him in many different ways. It was thus a common practice of crafting female figureheads for a ship’s prow, for example, in the picture below:

Hence, whilst the army man proudly shows off his Good Lady or Lady Wife, a navy man is most likely to sing with Mohammad Rafi, a song praising the beauty of a woman, the lyrics for which were written by poet laureate Harindranath Chattopadhyay (brother of Sarojini Naidu). The laughter and spoken lines in the opening and closing sections of the song were performed by Harindranath Chattopadhyay. The song was released in 1969 as a parody to another of Shankar Jaikishan’s compositions for the 1965 movie Gumnaam (four years before this song was released): Hum kaale hain to kya hua dilwaale hain. You will enjoy the lyrics given in the following video except for the fact that the navy man would be singing it for his ship!

If I were to call my wife Good Lady or Lady Wife, she would make me see the stars that I won’t otherwise be seeing at sea.

Sujata or Savitri, Sharda or Sumitra, Jyoti, Ganga or Jamuna, a navy man thinks of best names for his first lady-love: his ship.

There is this story of a sailor who went on his first leave after having been recruited in the Navy and having served on his first ship. The next day, first his mother and then his sisters, brother, father etc noticed that Jagtar Singh was in such deep sleep – as the one that a person gets in the Punjabi proverb ghode vech ke (after selling the horses) – that he refused to budge, let alone get up.

As the story goes, the alarmed parents and family consulted other siyaane (wise) men and women in the village but no one had any clue to this peculiar problem, let alone a solution. They also consulted the local quack who felt the sailor’s pulse and declared that the problem was beyond his saayins (science) too and all that the family could do was to pray.

They were about to give up when it occurred to them that Satnam Singh, another sailor, who had retired from the Navy a few years back, lived in the next village and probably he would know what is to be done with this unique naval problem. So, their other son Amrik (nickname Happy) was sent on the only power driven vehicle the family had – their Escort tractor – to fetch Satnam Singh from the next village.

One thing that the Navy teaches you is camaraderie; the fact is that you live in such close quarters that you are not just familiar with the way your shipmate’s looks but also his whims, fancies, idiosyncrasies and – hold your breath – smell. There is something about the salty seawater smell of a navy man that makes him stand out like a…..like a….well, salt-horse in the waves at sea. Hence, very soon, they had Happy bringing back Satnam Singh to revive Jagtar Singh. Satnam didn’t take long to come to grips with the situation. He lifted the eyelids of Jagtar and satisfied himself that Jagtar was alive but only blissfully sleeping; almost in a state of induced coma. He stood next to Jagtar’s prone figure and shouted, “Fresh water would remain open in all bathrooms for the next ten minutes”.

Jagtar’s reaction was to be seen to believed. He shot out of his cot like a pilot of an about to go down plane from his ejection seat, grabbed the nearest towel and shot into the nearest bathroom.

The grateful family asked Satnam, “Kaka, tussi Navy wich daakter sige?” (Son, were you a doctor in the Navy?)
And Satnam replied with pride, “Nahin ji; main fresh-water tankey si aapne jahaaz wich” (No, I was a Fresh Water Tankeyon my ship)

Many of you from the Army, Navy or civil backgrounds won’t know the importance of this position on the ship that Satnam proudly said he occupied, but an officer or sailor or even civilian on board (yes we have some civilians too on board like the dhobi, barber and civilian bearers) would know that a Fresh Water Tankey on board a ship is next to God only. He is a ME (Mechanical Engineer) who has been entrusted with the opening and closing of water from the Fresh Water Tank or Tanks (and hence called Tankey) to various bathrooms and galleys. Water at sea is the most scarce commodity. It would surely remind you of ‘water water everywhere and not a drop to drink”.

Yesterday, the veteran naval community in Mumbai were regaled by our annual Admiral Soman lecture (named after the visionary Vice Admiral Bhaskar Sadashiv Soman who was the 4th Chief of the Naval Staff of the Indian Navy from 1962 to 1966) by Ms Mehar Heroyce Moos on the subject of her expedition to Antarctica in 1977, making her the first Indian woman to have done so. She has been an avid and intrepid traveler who has visited 180 countries, tasted all kinds of food, met all kinds of people, and seen every nook and corner of our vast and beautiful Earth. During her talk she mentioned how, in Antarctica, water was the most precious commodity in all the camps. This would give you an idea of the famous water-water-everywhere dilemma. Antarctica is house to so much of ice that if it were to suddenly melt, the water levels of the oceans would rise by 57 feet. It stores seventy percent of Earth’s usable water. And yet when you are there, water is scarce.

Ships have evaporators to convert the salt-water into usable or potable water called fresh-water. Warships, as compared to merchant ships, have considerable manpower on board to man various weapons and sensors and combat positions. These men require fresh-water for various activities. The ship’s main purpose is to fight and hence fresh-water is not just scarce but luxury on board. Hence the importance of FW Tankey on board. It would be only at some scheduled timings that FW Tankey would open the fresh-water. If you miss the announcement, you have to wait for the next schedule that lasts only about 10 to 15 minutes. And who knows when the next schedule is there, whether you will be on watch or not, spreading your fragrance to all those who were fortunate enough to have not missed the earlier schedule.

Precisely for this reason, your ears are so tuned to this refreshing announcement that nothing else, not even ‘Hands to Action Stations’ or even ‘Hands to Lunch/Dinner’ gets the kind of response that ‘Fresh-Water will remain open in all bathrooms for ten minutes’ obtains. To this is to be added the fact that it is not as if each person on board has his own bathroom. The ratio is generally 10 to 20 persons per bathroom. Having the luxury of bath on board is therefore a race, not only against the other hopefuls but also against yourself, your needs and desires, and your skills that enable you to finish your bath before there is urgent knock at your bathroom door for having taken more time than was necessary for a “bride to get ready for her wedding“.

Thanks to Satnam, Jagtar’s family learnt how to bring Jagtar out of his indolence. But, they didn’t know that the Navy conditions your mind to such an extent that you find yourself at sea (lost) when you are on land. Jagtar was a changed man, unfit for everything except to be a sailor on board.

To learn more about how to wake up a determined sleeper on board, please read: Night Watch.

A great piece of information in the Times of India edition of yesterday, 28th March, totally went unnoticed. I am reproducing (!!!) the item below. It talks about a female hybrid fish that grows male reproductive organs, impregnating itself and then giving birth to offspring.

Navy wives (and probably their counterparts in the Army and the Air Force too) would be much excited to read the news. This is where the evolutionary process has reached so far in their alliance with their Navy husbands:

1. They meet their would be husbands in a party. He is handsome-looking and very gentlemanly and witty and therefore love blooms.
2. They start seeing each other in the evenings and whenever the occasions occur.
3. They proclaim that they cannot live without each other and exchange wedding vows.
4. They move into a one room house and it is fun and frolic for a few days. Just as she had imagined, he is great in bed too. She starts dreaming of having a child. Gods are kind and she has a baby even more handsome than her husband. But then, she notices that he starts cavorting with his first Love: the Navy; and she and the child are on their own.
5. She does everything to bring up the child (he, immersed in his never-ending nautical work, is often not even aware of how old his child or children are, what do they look like and what makes them happy) and is rewarded by his presence once in a blue moon.

Take my course mate LK, for example. N did everything for him; no, not the ‘selfing’, but practically everything else. From moving into a new house to asking MES personnel to repair this and that, arranging servants, parties, electricity, shopping, their daughter’s schooling to finally doing all the packing to move to a new station, N would do everything. LK would be too busy attending to the office work even at home.

Take my case. I had gone for a six month’s deputation to Spain, leaving Lyn in a hostile city called New Delhi and that too in a one room outhouse in Kotah House. We were to get an A-type accommodation (three things that were ultimate fantasies of Navy officers are: 1. A-type accommodation (lucky are those who get it before being transferred out of station). 2. A telephone with zero dialing facility (which means not just within the Navy but being able to contact the outside world too). 3. Transport. Nowadays, telephones is not such a big thing because of the ready availability of smart phones. However, accommodation and transport still continue being luxuries and hence fantasies). And, this allotment of A-type accommodation was to take place before being evicted out of the mess called Kotah House.

The before part didn’t take place when I was away abroad. Lyn and our two kids (Arjun 4 years and Arun 1 year old) were going to be on the road when she thought enough is enough and marched into CAO’s (Central Administrative Officer; the rank of a Major General) office. He admitted the fact, after consulting his officers, that yes I was on top of the roster for the last month or so but there was no suitable house available. He thought this would help him buy sometime and then he would think of what to do. But, evolutionary process, had taught Lyn many things even at that young age. She asked him if he could rent a tent to her and tell her where she could put it up since she was on the road with the two kids. By evening she moved into a house.

How did she learn all this? In my article ‘Indian Navy Is the Only Life That I have Known And Seen’, written about a year back, I had given glimpses of the automatic process through which Navy wives learn. I had also mentioned in ‘Lyn And I – Scene By Scene’, on the occasion of our wedding anniversary last year, that our first child was born when we were in mourning for my dad’s untimely death in a jeep accident and when the second child was born, she walked to the hospital on her own since my ship INS Ganga had sailed to Andaman and Nicobar islands with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and she (Lyn) was all by herself.

In the farewell speech of Admiral Nirmal Verma as the Chief of the Naval Staff, in Western Naval Command Officers’ Mess at Mumbai, he extolled the virtues of a happy married life. He said that he had learnt (this wisdom comes to us too late; at retirement time, most often than not) that we should spend much more time with our families than what we are spending now. Until we do, I guess, the ultimate fantasy of a Navy wife would be to assimilate the virtues of cichlid fish and do selfing so that her husband won’t have to do a thing towards raising their children!

And now, it is time for me to address my brethren in the Navy and by extension, in the IAF and the great Indian Army too:

Brothers,

Lets wake up. So far you have made your wives do everything at home whilst you earn your Vashisht Seva Medals, Ati Vashisht Seva Medals, and gallantry medals for service beyond the call of duty (whatever that means) at sea and in the offices ashore. She takes your children to the school, giving your name as the father and her name as the mother. She does the same with the ration card and any other card.

But, brothers; beware. The time is approaching when she would stop waiting for you, acts like the cichlid fish and then when she goes anywhere she would give her own name as both the father and the mother!

I agree with you that sailing merrily in your ships or flying your aircraft or being in your regiment/battalion is frightfully important and that the national security rests on your tiny shoulders. However, brothers, I saw Jim Carey’s ‘Liar, Liar’ the other day and in hindsight, I can tell you that there are a thousand ways to lie but only one way to the truth:

Act before it is too late.

Imagine how your children are going to feel the rest of their lives when they can smell that there is something fishy about how they were born!

Your brother-in-arms,
Sonbyanyname (sorry Sunbyanyname)

P.S. Some of you have only now started learning how to take a ‘Selfie’. Selfing is a – if I may say so – a different kettle of fish altogether.

 

P.P.S. I had aired another well-meaning fantasy in ‘The Year 2222 And The Naval Wars’. Don’t let it come true!

They are everywhere. They know that people would see through their dirty-tricks but they just can’t help being smart-asses. For example, we had a senior officer’s wife who was a kleptomaniac. One would think that she would have been afraid of being caught in the act or embarrassed or mortified. But, no, kleptomania is a mania beyond you. You just cannot help it. When the urge comes and you think that your host or hostess isn’t looking, you quietly let their expensive Murano glass slip in your purse, kind of naturally. It is the same thing with smart-asses. When the urge comes a calling, they just cannot resist it.

Life is really very interesting because of these smart-asses; they know everything; they have done this and that and make you wonder how life simply ignored you whilst these guys were having the time of their lives.

I give below a few representative cases only; in my nearly 37 years in the Navy, I have come across quite a few of them and I can actually write volumes about their exploits. But, this post is only just the trigger. I actually want you too to share similar experiences in the comments below the post.

Case #1
Walking in the sun together

This happened with me when I was undergoing my professional course in Communications in Signal School, Kochi. We were accommodated in the Southern Naval Command Mess and dined there too. The Mess was about a kilometer away from the School and unless one had a two-wheeler, one walked in the scorching heat and humidity that sapped your energy.

I had already got my donkey (a Yezdi 250 cc mobike) with some of my own money augmented by a loan from my dad. Hence, shuttling between the Mess and the School had become less tedious.

By the way, the road in the above picture is the what the National Highway (Ha! Ha!) between Mumbai to Goa looked like in 1981. I have always maintained that as far as Indian scene was/is concerned, Highway is a Punjabi word. When you go over a pot hole you end up saying, “Haai wey” (O’ my God; look). But, that’s another story.

Anyway, getting back to Case #1; on a particularly hot summer day (remember the ad: Always Summer, Always Coca-Cola? Well, that kind of typical Indian summer day), I was about to start back from the Signal School. I still remember that it was a Tuesday. How do i remember it after so many years? Well, it is very simple: on Tuesdays the lunch in the mess comprised Channa-Bhatura, my favourite meal during those days and I wanted to quickly reach the mess and gorge on at least a dozen Bhaturas (Distant memory! Nowadays, one feels cautious of having a single one).

I kicked the donkey. It gave a hiss and then got back to sleeping. I gave another. It just ignored me. I gave a series of frantic kicks but my donkey ignored me like a Malyali shopkeeper when you ask him to show a few more shirts (other than the one that he has selected for you) so that you could make a choice. Finally, I realised that time was running short and that if I was late, the mess cooks would run out of the dough to make Bhaturas. So, helmet in hand, I started walking toward the Mess. Lieutenant ABC, who in any case used to walk since he neither had a two-wheeler nor a helmet, accompanied me.

Recently, we (the woman in the above picture and I!) saw the movie Revenant (the one who returned, especially from being dead) starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I can assure you that the one km walk back to the mess with helmet in my hand was more painful than the entire adventure of Hugh Glass in Montana and South Dakota when he was left behind by his friends as dead after he was attacked by a bear. Seeing the helmet in my hand, many other bikers and scooterists offered me a ride; but, I politely declined thinking that Lieutenant ABC who was walking back with me would have to walk alone.

As the next biker stopped to give me a lift and as once again I declined, Lieutenant ABC borrowed my helmet and took off as a pillion with the guy who was offering me a lift.

Looking back, I realised why my loyal donkey ditched me that day; it was only so that I would learn a very useful lesson about life.

Case #2
“My wife; well, she is different”

I was posted in Vizag. Captain XYZ took over as my new boss. Since I was the second senior most after him, it was left to me to make him feel at home as also for my wife to introduce the other unit ladies to his wife. I told my wife to fix up with the other ladies and take them all in a group to my boss’s house so that all introductions would be done in one go.

In the office I requested the officers to convey this to their wives.

One particular officer, DEF, after the meeting, came to me and said that although the idea was good but his wife didn’t believe in brown-nosing senior officers’ wives and could she be excused? Now, I myself used to be a rebellious type who hardly followed traditions. So, in this particular case, I assured him that it wasn’t an order and was meant to be on voluntary basis only and hence Mrs. DEF should follow what her conscience permitted.

My wife, therefore, took all other ladies sans Mrs DEF to our boss’s house on a forenoon. They had the introductions, coffee and snacks,and nice cozy chat. When they were leaving, my wife told Mrs Boss that Mrs DEF couldn’t join them as she was preoccupied. At this, Mrs Boss responded, “Oh, don’t worry about Mrs DEF; she practically lives in our house since the time we have arrived in town. So sweet of her. She will be bringing home-cooked lunch for me today”.

Case #3
Good presenters are most professional officers

This officer was the smartest-ass that I have ever come across. The other day,I gave people the accepted definition of a smart-ass during our days: A smart-ass is someone who can sit on a cone of ice-cream and tell you what flavour it is. Well, this one was smart; very very smart and remained – well, buoyant – throughout his career in the Navy because of the natural gas that he possessed in abundance. The following was his motto:

The other day, a senior of mine remarked, “Story-tellers rule the world”. Well, ABC could not just tell a story but also take someone else’s story and tell it as his own. And at the end of it, people had only one reaction: Wow!

ABC dislodged another officer who had done all the hard-work to prepare his department of a ship to be commissioned, just before commissioning and took over as Navigating Officer. He set about remaking all the important books of the department such as Navigation Data Book, Navigation and Direction Standing Orders, Harbour and Sea Check Off Lists. Now all these require enormous hard-work. Fortunately, the Navigating Officer of my previous ship had done all the hard-work and all that ABC did was to borrow all the books from my previous ship, get a team of under-trainee Subaltern Lieutenants and Midshipmen to copy the entire stuff by merely changing the name of the ship wherever it occurred, put the stuff in beautiful looking bound books with lots of coloured borders and catchy titles.

These books are put up to the Commanding Officer every month for signatures and our CO, looking at all the hard-work that had gone in (actually, only presentation skills) had given excellent remarks on the books.

After a few months, we were on our way to a foreign cruise and our ship had the privilege of embarking the Fleet Commander who happened to be my previous ship’s CO (the same ship from where ABC’s minions had copied all the stuff and which the previous CO must have seen any number of times since he too would have these books put up to him every month. I don’t remember any occasion when he had written any complimentary remarks on those books).

One day, we were at sea doing nothing much (there was a break in the exercises schedule with other ships). Fleet Commander and my CO both were on the Bridge when my CO told the Fleet Commander that he would like to show the Fleet Commander the books maintained by his very capable Navigating Officer. For the next hour or so the Fleet Commander went through those books and this was his reaction, “These are simply outstanding.” He called the Fleet Operations Officer (FOO) and told him that on return to harbour he should promulgate these books as the standard to be used in the Fleet.

Later, after I finished my watch on the Bridge, I came down and subjected these books to a cursory glance and found that at a few places the name of my previous ship hadn’t been changed!

Smart-asses make our lives enriching experience for us whilst remaining buoyant throughout their careers.