Sunbyanyname

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.

If you have ever voted in any election in India, you are familiar with how they mark your index finger, extending from lower part of nail to skin of the finger, with indelible ink. This ink is produced in a company called Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited, the only company in India authorised to do so. After about 30 to 40 days, there is no trace of this indelible ink left and you are ready to vote again. Joining politics (or for that matter any other profession) has, at best, that so called indelible mark that stays a short time and then you are ready to be a turncoat and align your thinking and conduct with some other vocation.

However, one truly indelible ink is the one with which you are pronounced a fauji. It stays with you forever. Your mannerism, style, conduct and even way of thinking undergo permanent and indelible changes. You are not the same person anymore. As was penned by Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem ‘If’, the day you become a fauji, you suddenly become a man:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
…………………..
…………………..
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Son? Many a times I view things from my father’s point of view; how it must have been for him to send me to fauj knowing (I know that he knew) that, like those planes on trans-Atlantic flights, once I cross over that crucial point-of-no-return, I am gone forever. He knew that he was not sending me to a new profession, but a new life, family and world.

As I penned in ‘Indian Navy Is The Only Life That I Have Known Or Seen’, it is a totally different life, family and world. Even after you hang your uniform and boots (so as to say), you are left with only one way of problem solving, reacting and dealing with anything at all. I have spent, for example, nearly six years in India’s largest corporate company and even those six years didn’t change the way I dealt with problems. On the other hand, I applied fauji solutions to everything, albeit with a little modification.

My dad never joined the armed forces but for all practical purposes he was a fauji. I remember during my boyhood days, my sister and I were always in constant fear of him. Whenever we would hear his Monga (a German vehicle just like the Army Jonga) approaching (in the silence of the hills the engine noise of the Monga was distinct), we would be like dahine-se-sajj (by the right, dress). As soon as he would be with us, the inquisition would commence starting with if we read the newspaper; and, if we did, what was the national and international news.

He was also punctual like a fauji and always kept appointments dot on time. During my sister’s marriage, for example, he nearly cancelled the time when the baraat (marriage party) didn’t reach on time. Our relatives had tough time calming him down with “kudi daa maamla hai” (It is your daughter’s life).

LIke a fauji he was forever young (jawan) and physically fit.

But, the foremost manner in which he was like a fauji was his problem solving abilities and those related to quickly getting to the core of the matter rather than beating around the bush. The other day a senior colleague wrote a piece in one of the publications about how Indians keep discussing problems and solutions but never get to implementation of any of them. Dad was different. He would do before you could count till ten and in many cases, like a typical Punjabi, do the thinking later.

So, after my initial training in the Naval Academy at Cochin (now Kochi), I joined the Cadet Training Ship INS Delhi. I was excited because it was a dream come true to be finally on board an Indian Naval Ship. To give him credit, dad had tried his utmost to stall my becoming a fauji. He constantly bombarded me with how he was preparing me to become an IAS/IFS officer and that sane, intelligent and respectable people should steer clear of becoming fauji. Dad didn’t succeed and I eventually became what I wanted to become: an Indian Navy officer. However, the present leadership of the country and the current attitude of our countrymen are now succeeding to keep as many young men and women from joining the armed forces as they can with their relentless indifference and disrespect.

Anyway, after the tough routine of my first day on the cruiser Delhi, I burnt the midnight oil in writing to him a detailed letter about how my dream had finally come true.

I wrote about the history of Delhi. I wrote that when she was with the British, she was named HMS Achilles and had taken part in the famous Battle of the River Plate (close to Argentina) with HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter (a battle in which they were pitted against the might Admiral Graf Spee and others). I wrote that in 1948 she joined the Indian Navy as first HMIS Delhi and then INS Delhi on India becoming a republic on 26th Jan 1950. I wrote that she starred in the 1956 movie ‘The Battle of the River Plate’ with John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, and Peter Finch. I wrote that whilst I was in the Naval Academy at Cochin, on one of the afternoons I had seen the movie. I recounted an interesting anecdote that in one of the aerial shoots, the complete scene of Delhi as Achilles was shot with the other ships when the Director Michael Powell frantically asked for the scene to be done again. It was because even though all hatches were kept closed, at the crucial moment, one Sikh sailor emerged from one of the hatches complete with beard and turban.

I also described the 6 – guns of the ship and how she helped to liberate Goa on 18th Dec 1961. I wrote about walking on the quarterdeck of the ship whereat history invariably walked with me and my chest exceeded (in later years, Narendra Modi’s) 56 inches when I walked past the 6 – inch guns with their brass plaque describing the famous battles she had fought and won.

I described the forever humming of the engines and the generators and my bunk in the cadet’s mess. Whilst describing the ship in relation to me, I even quoted the poet:

The guns you fired were my guns,
And the lives you lived were mine

The arrival of this letter at our house Whispering Winds, Kandaghat was described to me by my mom. After dinner, dad and mom slipped into the bed and dad (as he was wont to do) asked my mom to read the son’s letter to him. She read slowly and deliberately all the way from Dear Dad to …….. lives you lived were mine ….. with lots and love and regards to mom and you….yours affectionately Ravi.

After she had finished, dad lay there thinking for sometime and then asked her to read the letter all over again. Mom, thinking that dad had made peace with my having become a fauji and was full of deep fatherly love and high respect for the history and heritage of the Indian Navy, read it the second time, more slowly and and with added emphasis. After finishing she awaited his response. And sure enough, the response came. This was it:

“Kinne paise mang rehya hai?” (How much money is he asking for?)

PS: If dad was the Finance Minister of NaMo, instead of Arun Jaitley, the faujis won’t have to beg on their knees endlessly for OROP.

The story so far:

In Part I, Episode I of this post I described to you that I was made the Naval Liaison Officer (NLO) of Merchant Vessel Nancowry which was part of the Amphibious Task Force (ATF) given the task of taking the army personnel and wherewithal for an Amphibious Assault on Carnicobar from the port of Vizag in Andhra Pradesh. My team had tough time during the midnight embarakation of army personnel.

Read on:

Nancowry was hardly the luxury liner that one reads about or sees in the movies. It had countless portholes. It was tough time for my team and I to instill discipline in hundreds of jawans to keep them closed so that no light would show outside. It appeared to me that CATF (Commander Amphibious Task Force) staff and AFC (Amphibious Force Commander) staff had nothing else to do in the night but to keep making urgent signals to Nancowry to darken ship immediately. And no sooner that my staff would succeed in closing one particular porthole pointed out by AFC that another would open. By the morning, in this Porthole Test Match, the Army had won 127 – 82 to the Navy represented by my staff of just five. We didn’t even know which porthole had light showing through it until we would get a nasty signal. Significantly, in my report post the Amphex, I did mention that in the next Amphex the Navy need to get vessels without any portholes. Saawan me andhe ko hara hi hara dikhaayi deta hai(the one who becomes blind in monsoons sees only greenery). Likewise, I associate Amphex with portholes.

My team and I managed to get about 2 hours of sleep each in the wee hours of morning.

If we had this complaint against the Army about the portholes discipline or lack of it, their list of complaints ran into hundreds of pages. If portholes were to be kept closed then messes were stuffy, was one of them. The others ranged from cooking standards, shortage of water and not having to do anything worthwhile at sea.

I had another three days and nights to go before we would reach Carnicobar, our place of amphibious assault. And I reckoned that I had to think fast so that the rest of the time on board won’t be as miserable as the first night.

But, who should I turn to for advice? Captain Kabina, the master of the MV Nancowry was a former Commander of the Indian Navy and that too from my branch: Communication. However, till as long as his ship was chartered to the Indian Navy, for operational purposes, he was to be under my orders as per the Navy Act. Hence, turning to him for advice in an operational matter was ruled out.

The only other person to turn to was Commodore Mukherjee, the AFC. I raised him on the walkie-talkie. One of the difficulties of naval communications is that with the signalese perfected over a period of time, one is never able to convey one’s emotions properly, even if one is on walkie – talkie. It is not like a wife telling a husband, “Sunate ho jee, Bunty ne phir aaj apani nicker phaad di; main to tang aa gayi hoon usake kapade seete seete. Mera sir phata jaa raha hai. (Are you listening? Bunty has again torn his shorts; I am tired of mending his clothes. I have a splitting headache”. Naval communications, on the other hand, go something like this:

One Alpha, this is Charlie Six: Over
This is One Alpha Over, what is the trouble? Over.
(You want to tell him that the trouble is not over but only just begun; but you control your emotions, the unnecessary part of naval communications)
This is Charlie Six: Sir, how to keep the pongoes (naval slang for army personnel) busy? Over.
Charlie Six, this is One Alpha: Find a way. I repeat: find a way. Over and out.

Some of the departmental sailor chiefs who have approached their departmental officers for specific instructions to sort out vague problems have often returned with the age-old order, “Carry on, Chief Saab”. I was stunned that the AFC had subjected me to similar treatment. Urdu poets of yore had wonderful couplets for this situation; one juicy one being:

“Unase mil kar badhi aur dil ki khalish,
Guftugoo bhi hui khaamoshi ki tarah”
(A tryst with her increased the anxiety of my heart,
Discussion took place like total silence)

The inventor of a location or position called Square One must have been happy to see me occupying the position after my guftugoo with the AFC. But, the fact is that one cannot spend one’s life in Square One; one has to move on. I thought and thought and thought and came up with options I had. And finally it hit me like a bolt from the blue. I issued out orders regarding the routine of the day from Hands Call to Pipe Down with Morning and Evening PT (Physical Training) thrown in, in good measure.

It was nice to see hundreds of jawans, NCOs and JCOs and officers lining up the upper decks twice a day and sweating it out to the whistle of our PTI. In an earlier article, I had written how a good haircut is seen to solve most naval problem (Please read ‘Cut, Cut, Cut…..’). Now, a few good rounds of PT at sea solved the following problems:

1. Coming on the upper decks helped jawans to fill up air in their lungs and hence portholes could be kept closed at night.
2. The strenuous (at sea it is strenuous to do these things since one has to do so countering the rolling and pitching of the ship) exercises built up appetites and they attacked their food without complaining (hungry souls hardly complain about quality of cooking).
3. They had something to keep themselves busy at sea. Their officers added their own drills and orders to keep them busy.

In the night, my walkie-talkie crackled again:

Charlie Six this is One Alpha: Over.
One Alpha this is Charlie Six: It is over Sir.
This is One Alpha: Good boy. Roger out.

Next day on the Bridge I wanted to ask senior communicator Captain Kabina how was it that whilst stressful emotions were scarcely conveyed over naval communication nets, feelings of elation were instantly communicated?

I underwent the Higher Command Course with the Army from Jul 1996 to May 1997 (HC 25, that is) in the College of Combat (presently called the Army War College) at Mhow, near Indore in Madhya Pradesh. In our course, there were 37 officers from the Army, six from the IAF and two from the Navy. My first humorous article that appeared in Aug 1996 issue of Combat News is reproduced below.

Just before coming for the HC-25, friends gathered around me, with drinks in their hands, re-enacting ‘The Last Supper’. Naturally, the conversation veered around to the Army and their ‘peculiar habits’. It was unknown territory. “Basically, they are nice people,” said one in the manner of a visitor consoling a cancer patient, “And you have nothing to worry”. A civilian friend wanted me to confirm (“just to settle a bet”) if the Army men did everything with their boots on.

After having spent the first month here, I am able to report back that I have met some of the nicest people, who are as normal and professional (if not more) as we pretend to be. The main thing different or peculiar, I found, is the Army’s penchant to use abbreviations and acronyms – a sort of ‘bikini speech’ clothed in minimum words and that too shortened. It is rumoured that our SI (South Indian) Army friends cannot enjoy their food unless they have RSVP, ie, Rasam Sapadam, Varellum, Papadam; and those from P, H and D prefer PPK, ie, Papad, Pickle and Kuchamber.

Human mind has marvelous adaptability. Very soon I got used to living in KLP rather than in an officers’ mess, the former being in more of a mess than the latter. Nowadays, when someone speaks of the ‘conc area’, I am not reminded of the pogroms and when I see ‘junc’ written on a map, I do not associate it with a scrapyard.

Sometimes, of course, various explanations come to my mind as to why the bikini speech. The English language and literati owe a lot to the nautical terms and phrases which are in common usage now. Bikini Speech may be Army’s way of Indianising the English language. After all, how many of the English and the Chinese will be able to identify with the English and Chinese foods that we serve in our messes? On the other hand, the Army man may actually be in a hurry (note how they have changed even short words like night and enemy into shorter ni and en), expecting a ‘short and swift battle’ as the cliche goes. But then an incoming Exocet missile would give only 45 to 60 seconds reaction time before it hits a ship and still we have the time to say ‘Aye-aye Sir’ or acknowledge (not ack) a report by saying “Very Good”.

It may be to inculcate brevity? But this could not be the case. The Army orders are really very long and exhaustive. In Staff College, for example, when we were dumbfounded by nine pages of ‘Parking Instrs’, full of abbreviated words, we asked an Army officer to decipher. He quickly went through the edict and summed up, “Parking anywhere in the College, by student officers, is forbidden”.

Are we selectively brief exhorting our juniors to employ the bikini speech so that we will not have to read lots of junc – sorry – junk? A little FFT (Food For Thought). Whatever be the explanation, the sys appears to work in the Army. So press on Army. Maybe you can prove the makers of MR Coffee wrong and real pleasure may actually be in an ‘instant’. (This was a take on the MR Coffee ad that became quite controversial since it hit instant coffee so suggestively. I am reproducing the ad of those days starring Malaika Arora and Arbaz Khan):

P.S. By publishing this item in the Combat News the Army has proved that they are very nice people indeed but that henceforth, I should avoid conc areas in dark alleys, when they have their boots on (which is all the times).

In the Navy, names of all exercises are suffixed with the letters EX. Hence, we have TACEX as Tactical Exercise, SPRINGEX as a Theatre Level Exercise during Spring Time, REACTIONEX as an Exercise at sea to assess the reactions of the ship’s company, and so on.

The suffix EX also gives rise to a new and entirely naval vocabulary. So, if you come across an officer in the wardroom in totally disengaged state,  and you happen to ask him what is he doing, he is likely to reply with a single coded word: COOLEX; which is roughly the equivalent of the modern teenager telling you that he is chilling.

Navy guys never rue the loss of girl-friends or beloveds (you never come across guys who have chucked themselves under trains or buses because their flames have gone to light up someone else’s life). Hence, other than to signify exercises, the suffix EX doesn’t have another significance for them. The suffix EX also lends some dignity to what they are engaged in. For example, BALLEX sounds frightfully more important than merely admitting that one is having a ball. Many decades back, Wills (Cigarettes) were the sponsors of the Navy Ball in Bombay. Their posters put up all over Bombay – at traffic circles, railway stations, Marine Drive, on the BEST buses, et al – read: THE NAVY IS HAVING A BALL. The navy big-wigs were not amused. Wills didn’t exactly have a ball (of a time) taking down the offending posters.

Many decades back the only use that the Army could think of the Navy was to land troops, tanks and vehicles for them at remote places. Hence, Amphibious Operations assumed tremendous significance. That was precisely the time when one of the most important roles of the Eastern Naval Command at Vizag was to exercise Amphibious Operations. Thus, the concept of AMPHEX (Amphibious Exercise) came into being.

I was involved in a number of Amphexes. My first major involvement was when I was merely a Lieutenant Commander and sent to Vizag on temporary duty. I was happily engaging myself in such activities as young officers often engage in – from rum to rummy, that is, and an activity known in the Navy by its acronym only: FRCS (Other than telling you that CS is Country-Side, I won’t tell you more: my lips are sealed).

One fine day, my ex CO of Agrani, who was appointed as CO Circars (the depot establishment in Vizag) was nominated to become the Amphibious Forces Commander and lead an amphibious force from Vizag to the Anadaman and Nicobar islands. Four passenger liners from the trade were chartered by the Navy to carry troops across to A&N for an amphibious assault. Senior Commanders were appointed as Naval Liaison Officers on three of the ships. However, for a ship called MV Nancowry (the name taken from one of the islands in A&N), I, a junior Lieutenant Commander, was appointed as the NLO. This was because my ex CO had tremendous faith in my abilities; a little more than I had.

I had a Lieutenant, a Sub-Lieutenant and a handful of sailors with me in my team to prepare the ship for over 500 army personnel, their weapons, vehicles and equipment, install naval communications, and control all the operations at sea. We had sleepless nights preparing all the plans and orders. The ship was available for less than 48 hours to familiarise ourselves and make her ready for the embarkation. We prepared detailed orders, for example, for accommodation and messing, ration-embarkation, communications and operations at sea.

With this, it was to be expected that things would go on smoothly. Like most war plans they didn’t even last the first shot.

The embarkation started at night so as to afford a measure of secrecy. My team had even marked the routes for various personnel so as to enable them to reach their messes. However, for the first one hour, no embarkation whatsoever took place. I was getting most jittery because at midnight I was supposed to make a report to Cmde Mukherjee, the AFC, that the embarkation was completed. And here, in the first one hour no embarkation had taken place. The Lieutenant in my team informed me that the army personnel had declined to embark since we had omitted to make provision for the Mandir (Temple). “How serious?” I asked him, barely able to control my anxiety. “Very serious” he replied on the walkie-talkie.

The Commodore wanted to know the progress from me since we were supposed to sail late at night. I told him that gods were being appeased. Taking it as one of my usual remarks (since he had been my CO earlier), he responded with “Very Good”. Some of you may not be familiar with this response but it is a standard response by the senior officer in the navy to acknowledge the report by a junior (I have seen/heard junior officer reporting to the senior excitedly that a certain compartment was on fire and the senior calmly acknowledging it with “Very Good” as if he couldn’t have asked for anything better).

My team and I re-worked everything and the icon of the goddess was installed in a compartment to be occupied by three army pujaris, complete with dhotis, white topis and tilaks. Coconuts were broken, agarbattis lit, pooja was performed, prasad distributed and then only the embarkation started.

We sailed at wee hours of the morning escorted by several naval ships under CATF (Commander Amphibious Task Force). These had started sailing in the evening; the minesweepers having sailed much earlier. One ship was reported to have been torpedoed by a lurking enemy submarine. Luckily, thanks to our having appeased the goddess, we escaped.

Many years later, I underwent Higher Command Course with the Army and realised the importance of Mandir, Masjid, Gurudwara to the jawans wherever they are even at the heights of Leh and Siachin. One lives and learns.

This post is just an introductory post to the series of posts on Amphex and other EXercises. Please await the sequels.