Sunbyanyname

Married to a Catholic Christian I am familiar with Lazarus of Bethany who was witness to resurrection of Christ four days after he was crucified.

LtCdr Lazaro had a similar sounding name. He resurrected us when we were cadets on the cruiser INS Delhi and were ‘crucified‘ with the tough and listless routine on board; which including holy-stoning the wooden decks (rubbing the decks with wet sand and pumice stone in order to preserve the glean of the deck). He visited us to deliver a talk about the advent of missiles in the Gunnery world.

He was commanding one of the Osa class of missile boats, similar to the ones that took part in Operation Trident, on 4th Dec 1971 and devastated Karachi. With that the Indian Navy entered the missile age and since these guys had started with a stupendous success, they had the air of supreme confidence, swashbuckling approach and insouciant manner of speech.

We were totally bowled over by Lazaro and his talk. His carefree mannerism, Russian looking beard and lingo was the stuff we had imagined heroes of the sea to possess. When he called the Prime M Indira Gandhi as Indu aunty, we were tickled. He could have called God as “Jesus old chap” and would have gotten away with it. For a number of days after his talk we were moving around in a daze.

Some 36 years later, I had taken over as Director of College of Naval Warfare, at Karanja Mumbai. One of the DSs suggested that since Lazaro was visiting Mumbai from US, we could invite him to deliver a talk. He said, he, Lazaro, was now a research scientist in a university there (I think University of Wisconsin) and he would speak to us on – say – Decision Making Under Conditions of Ambiguity.

I was really excited. Here was my boyhood hero and he was coming to talk to us. I was looking forward to the effect of his swashbuckling style on the students. I thought they would be floored just as I was 36 years back when I was a young cadet.

Lazaro arrived at the college. He looked scholarly and a far cry from my cadet time hero. He started his talk giving some complex equations. He ended it 90 mins later (it looked like eternity) with even more complex equations. In between, if you think he filled it up with absorbing anecdotes or nonchalant humour, you are sadly mistaken. He packed his speech with still more complex equations. His talk was, therefore, as interesting as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh speaking on ‘The Exciting Moments of His Tenure as PM’. I noticed that the student officers were visiting the toilets more frequently than with any other speaker; a sure sign of weary apathy.

One of the student officers mentioned to me later that if Decision Making was so monotonous, Ambiguity wasn’t a bad bet at all.

The only person who benefited from his talk was me. I was planning, after retirement from Navy, to be doing research on Benefits of Meditation on Stressed Officers in Indian Navy. I have decided to drop the idea to my next to next life after I recover from the let-down of my gallant and rakish hero becoming a research scholar.

This incident happened half-way through my tenure on INS Himgiri, the first time I served on that ship, as an Acting Sub Lieutenant for my Watch-keeping certificate.

We had a prim n propah CO: Cdr NN Anand, also known as Baby Anand since he was way ahead of his contemporaries. What they would achieve several years hence, he had already achieved.

During those days COs gained reputation by how cool they were on the Bridge and Baby Anand was a cool one, indeed. I recall that he trained us well and gave us ample opportunity to have independent charge of the ship in harbour as well as at sea.

The Command Headquarters never plan out your sea sorties keeping such important dates in mind as New Year, Diwali, Holi and Raksha Bandhan. Indeed, it appears to me that they actually keep these dates in mind and ensure you don’t waste time and money spending such dates with your families.

So, it was with the New Year Eve of 31st Dec 1975. We were on passage from Cochin to Bombay and the New Year of 1976 was to be ushered in on our helo deck.

There was an entertainment programme by the ship’s company. We, the Sub Lieuts, presented yet another spoof on the movie Sholay, for example:

G.S.: Are’ o bison, how many tablets are there in this pistol?
S.: Government, six.
G.S.: Tablets six and men only three? Big injustice……

Frankly, it had gone a wee bit flat despite our innovation. CO had a guest on board. One Commander Awasthi who was taking passage with us to Bombay. We didn’t know about it; but, the sailors knew his reputation for ribaldry.

Soon, there were several cat calls to finish with the Sholay spoof of ours just when we had come to what we thought was the juicy item:

Veeru: Springy, in front of these dogs, don’t dance….

And, then, the sailors had Awasthi to regale them with his earthy wit and humour in the language of the streets.

Awasthi was used to calling a spade as spade and uttered with a straight face, Hindi equivalents of English four letter words.

This was much to our CO’s discomfiture. Every-time Awasthi related a juicy one, CO was seen closing his eyes in silent prayer to God to let that be the last one! However, Awasthi’s repertoire was rather large and he had us lapping up his rustic jokes for close to an hour.

Finally, at the stroke of midnight, all other nautical activities took place as in my other anecdote ‘Goddamn Happy New Year!’.

Our CO was the happiest steering Awasthi towards his cabin after that.

P.S. For those of you who entertain the hope that I would relate at least one of them here, I can only say that my blog policy doesn’t permit me to squeak even a single one. How filthy were they? Well, in comparison, Rugby jokes can be told to a bishop’s daughter!

P.P.S. I was reminded of the inimitable Khushwant Singh. He was a rare guest speaker at Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Nilgiris (Tamilnadu) when I was undergoing the staff course in the year 1990. He recounted to us an anecdote about meeting the Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal. Apparently, Bhajan Lal was used to surfeit of Hindi expletives in his conversation. When he seemed to cross his limit, Khushwant gently reminded him, “Sir, please gaali mat deejiye” (Sir, please don’t use expletives. At this, if Khushwant Singh was to be believed, Bhajan Lal countered with a straight face: “Kaun behen___ gaali deta hai?” (Who is the sister-f—-r who is using expletives?)

Happy New Year?

I have lost count of the number of times I have been on duty in my ship or establishment on the New Year Eve. Somehow, my friends – my ‘good friends’, that is – have talked me into paying the price of having them as ‘good friends’ in a manner not dissimilar to what Eklavya (of Mahabharta) had to pay having Guru Drona (or his statue) as his mentor in archery. Eklavaya, the low-caste, lost his thumb only once; whereas, yours truly, the bottom-most (gullible) caste, had lost my liberty and entertainment on several new year eves.

One such New Year Eve was to be on Himgiri, under the command of Captain R Patel (Jerry Patel) at Cochin. On this occasion, honestly speaking, not even lots were drawn. Most of the wardroom officers made yours truly people’s choice #1 and departed in the evening with great back-slapping etc with hefty promises such as: “Don’t you worry, old chap, you shall not miss out on the fun; as every-time we have a drink or dance, we shall think of you.”

A few stayed back on the ship and busied themselves in having drinks in the ante-room and then later join in the general revelry on the ships (blowing of ship’s siren and firing of Very pistols (signalling pistols giving out red, green or white flares) at the stroke of midnight, when the ship’s bell too is rung.

I finished taking my rounds of the ship and found that all was well in God’s world in general and on Himgiri in particular. And then I entered the Wardroom to have my dinner. One look at the would-be-revellers brought out that the mood was rather sombre. A direct enquiry from me brought out that they wanted to usher in the New Year with champagne and the wine steward had told them that there were only two bottles of good French champagne Moet (Brut Imperial) but these had been reserved for the Captain.

I asked for the Wine Steward and told him that the Regs Navy made me, the Officer of the Day (OOD), as Captain for the time being and that I was going to release for the thirsty souls what had been reserved for me as Captain. The Wine Steward saluted and used the wonderful naval expression that has won many a heart the world over: “Aye aye, Sir”. Anon, two of the best of the bubblies stood before me, bowing to my authority as the OOD.

It would take time to chill these and hence in the meantime, enjoying my power to bring cheer in their otherwise d and d lives, I invited the caboodle in the ante-room to Captain’s cabin. The stewards were given the surprise-test-of-professional-abilities to produce the best for the best in the world; that is, the jing-bang from the wardroom.

Ladies and gentlemen, this old chap called Albert Einstein, like many Germans, knew exactly what he was talking about when he came up with the Theory of Relativity of Time. It appeared to us that in the time it takes one to read E=mc2, several bottles of liquor flowed down the Ganges in Captain’s cabin and soon I, and not poor Albert E, was being nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Soon, when it came to ringing out the old year and ringing in the new year on the ship that I had charge of as Captain-for-the-time-being, it appeared to me that a fair amount of ringing had already been done in the Captain’s cabin itself.

After a brief ceremony on the helo-deck, wherein we witnessed sounding of siren, ringing the ship’s bell and firing of Very pistols; when the j-b returned to Captain’s cabin to further usher in the New Year, yours truly had sobered down quite a bit and wanted it to end abruptly like Dhoni’s test career. However, now that I had aroused a sleeping giant (the last such “arousing of the sleeping giant”, if you recall, was on 7th Dec 1941 with Admiral Yamamoto’s fighters wreaking havoc on Pearl Harbour with the war-cry of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”), it was well-nigh impossible to let them sleep until they had completely ransacked the Captain’s bar. It was at around 1:30 AM, when my constant endeavour to restore ‘Good Order and Naval Discipline’ had some effect and the wild lot departed, loudly singing, “Ravi’s a jolly good fellow….so say all of us”.

It took me another one hour to get the Captain’s cabin ship-shape and that’s about the time the party from US Club landed on board led by Captain Jerry Patel. As I saw him off to his cabin, Jerry asked me to have a drink with him to ‘usher in the new year properly‘. I declined saying that it wasn’t proper for me to drink on duty!

I was quite sure, in the night, that I had removed from his cabin the last traces of a drunken soiree or mayhem. But, next day, after breakfast, frantic announcements for me to report to Captain’s cabin told me something was amiss.

I reported there breathlessly and there was our beloved CO staring at an object on his table in a manner similar to the police looking at the dead body in  James Hadley Chase novels. It turned out to be CO’s Visitors Book and there, et tu Brutus, my good friends, in their stupor had all signed one by one with melodramatic messages of “Happy New Year, Sir”, “You and your OOD are the bestest guys this side of Suez” etc.

It is the ruddy Visitors Book that did me in.

I hate New Year; Goddamn Happy New Year!

P.S. Later in (what-was-left-of) the night, I had to send the Fire and DC Party to extinguish a slow smouldering harmless fire in a sulphur dump next to our commercial berth; this fire being caused by the firing of Very pistols to – you guessed it right – usher in the New Year properly.

Do you recall the time when we used to study Algebra or Trignometry in school? After battling with such arcane and complex formulae, we used to wonder if we would ever require them later in our lives. I for one never had the occasion to use any of these even once.

The same, however, cannot be said of rig-changing that we used to do as cadets in the Academy. We had to appear before our seniors in one rig or the other, the complete thing taking not more than 60 seconds. This had great meaning for us in later lives when suddenly the Navy expects you to change over from one role to the other. Many times, the Navy expects you to be dual or multi-roled and you have to take them in your stride. COs of frontline ships, for example, are often multiroled as masters of ceremony and event managers.

In the year 2003, I was made the Director of Maritime Warfare Centre (MWC) in Mumbai. Since earlier, I had been Director of MWCs at Vizag and Kochi too, this made me the only officer in the Navy who was made Director of all three MWCs of the Navy.

Even before I took over, I was involved in a major one man investigation concerning illegal gratification taken by many officers in Materiel Organisation (Mumbai). As per the Navy Order itself, such major investigation should be handed over to the CBI. But, the Navy, mindful of its image, thought of Captain Ravi achieving what a team of CBI operators would have achieved. So, there I was, with scarcely any resources at my disposal, trying to unearth a gigantic scam and bring to book the culprits.

To give you an example of how much the Navy helps you once it gives a task to you; I must relate this anecdote. I had dozens of witnesses deposing before me everyday. Now, you can’t get the truth out of witnesses by show of authority. You have to make them feel at home. So naturally,  I would offer them tea and snacks and often lunch; all at my personal expense. When this was going on and on, I wrote to Command HQ requesting them for Rupees 2000 to defray this expense. A month later, a reply was received, signed personally by CSO (P&A): “Your request for a grant of Rupees 2000 is being processed at this headquarters. In the meantime, please forward a daily expense of number of cups of tea served and snacks”. (Read: ‘Three Things I’d Like To Change If I Were To Join The Armed Forces Again – Part I’, wherein I brought out how the command headquarters mandarins can be even more bureaucratic than the babus.)

Anyway, I kept up with the investigation. When I submitted my report within a month, the Navy decided to Court Martial six officers. In the next two years, I undertook the CM of four out of six officers. The Materiel Suprintendant (MS), one Commodore Pandit, was tried under the difficult Prevention of Corruption Act, 1982. It was in the media at that time that out of 3000 bureaucrats tried under this act, in the last two years, not a single case had resulted in conviction. However, I became some sort of lawyer by studying the intricacies of POCA. My homework and court work ensured that the MS was given 18 months of Rigorous Imprisonment. The others were thrown out of the Navy and given other lesser punishments.

I did all these whilst commanding an operational training institute and conducted major exercises and debriefs during this period. That itself is great humour; in the Navy, we don’t ask; we just do it.

Here are some of the CM humour. The list is long but I shall give you this in posts of manageable length:

CM Humour #1. Just retired JAG (Judge Advocate General) of the Navy, Commodore Sukhjinder Singh, was the Defence Counsel for one of the accused. His long ‘submissions’ about me were not just irrelevant but getting on my nerves. Most, if not all, were only to waste the time of court and frankly intended to prepare for appeal in a civil court at a later date. One day, after a long submission by him that took almost an hour, I intervened to respectfully ask the court to remind my learned Counsel for Defence that it was the Accused who was on trial and not the Prosecutor. This had a sobering effect on him for the rest of the day. But, he was back with a vengeance the next day trying to prove the Prosecutor guilty.

CM Humour #2. Some of the language used in the court is preposterously funny. For example, whilst referring to each other, both the Prosecutor and the Defence Counsel call each other ‘My Learned Defence Counsel/Prosecutor’. But, the body language and tone of both leave no doubt that they are referring to duffer and ass of very high order who should have been in a rehabilitation centre for retarded and mentally challenged people rather than let loose in an honourable court.

CM Humour #3. Outside the court room, especially over tea, snacks and meals, there is an atmosphere of false camaraderie, put-up joviality and artificial sincerity; the kind that you see between BJP and Shiv Sena. During such periods you crack jokes and amuse youself with pointless banter. In the course of one such break, I asked my Learned friend as to how did he decided to become a lawyer. He said he was in his college in Patiala. One day, a dear class-mate of his and he were whiling away their time in the college canteen when his friend ruminatively said, “Yaar Sukhjinder tu law kar lai” (Friend Sukhjinder, you should do law). When Sukhjinder enquired from him why, this was the innocent reply he received: “Yaar main apne gwaandi da murder karan di soch reha haan” (Friend, I am thinking of murdering my neighbour). That’s a typical Punjabi way of thinking. They brush aside serious things and consequences. A typical saying in Punjab is: “Jaada tonh jaada ki ho jaayu? Phaansi ho jaayu? Oh, aseen jhall lawange.” ( What is the worst outcome? I will be hanged? Well, I shall get over that somehow)

CM Humour #4. One day, during one of these breaks, I told Sukhjinder something. To my shocked surprise, he quoted this inside the court in the defence of the accused and in his relentless attempt to prove the Prosecutor guilty. This gave me an opening towards using him to build up my case! It was somewhat similar to the jail scene in the movie Sholay in which Viru and Jai whisper loud enough for the jailor’s spy to hear: “Jail mein pistaul aa chuka hai.” ( A pistol has been smuggled into the jail). Court Martial or for that matter any court is a mind-game finally; you have to remain ahead of the other guy.

Okay, enough for the first part. Remain tuned in for the remaining parts.

There is something about Goa that makes you feel young, romantic and reckless. And it is not just Feni or the easy availability of Goan wines. It is as if when you enter Goa, you are destined for good times; always summer, always fun on the beaches, dancing and merriment. And you don’t have to be a Herman Wouk to say: Don’t Stop The Carnival.

Merriment was, however, farthest from our minds when our ship Himgiri entered Vasco da Gama harbour. Yes, it was sunny; yes, there was this Goan appeal in the air; and yes, we felt young. However, we had entered Goa only for a few hours and were scheduled to sail as early as 7 AM the next day. Our Captain, a tall and upright submariner (he later rose to become the Chief of the Naval Staff) was the most prim and proper CO I had ever served with. He was very of all good things, ie, very knowledgeable, very intelligent, very effective and very serious. He was the kind that you read about in John Winton and CS Forrester books. He always meant business.

Lets say you were sitting in the wardroom nursing your drink and there was an announcement: “Electrical Officer requested Captain’s cabin”; it won’t be that Captain was feeling bored and wanted company. It would surely be something to do with power, generators, weapons or sensors. You could bet on it and win. As I said, he called you only on business and you’d generally rush to his cabin because he detested delays.

So, when we secured alongside at about 4 PM, the most romantic thing that occurred to anyone of us was to change into games rig and go for a walk, return on board, have early dinner and get up early next day for yet another sailing. It appeared to us that life on Himgiri revolved around sailings: you either sailed or prepared to sail.

It was merely 5 PM when we headed towards the sleepy town of Vasco da Gama in PT shorts and shoes. There were four of us: The Engineer Officer, the Electrical Officer, the Navigating Officer and the Signal Communication Officer. Someone suggested that we walk fast so as to “sweat out the extra fat that weeks of sailing without a stop had deposited on our bodies.” And that’s precisely what we did. At about 6 PM, we reached Vasco da Gama and passed in front of our favourite watering hole: Aunty’s.

One of us suggested – kind of demurely – that now that we had gotten rid of several kilos, perhaps we could just split a couple of beers between us and also Aunty’s famous Goan sausages. The objecting voices within and without were put to rest by the topper of an argument that no one, not even a child, had ever got pissed on half a bottle of beer. The Engineer Officer also added magnanimously that he had brought his wallet for exactly this kind of contingency. I do not know how they reason out things in the army and the air-force, but, the lingo of the naval officers is to be heard to be believed. Any eavesdropper would think they are planning something of great national and naval importance; whilst, all they are doing is to quickly appreciate and assess how many beers and sausages would keep them in good fettle so that four kilometres of brisk walk won’t be wasted.

Beer and peanuts have been made by God with just one purpose in mind: to try the will-power of man. As they say: ‘Will-power is to have just one peanut’. It is virtually the same with beer. After our downing of the first glass of the sparkling golden drink, we slowly bade good-bye to Will-Power and send her back to the ship. By the third glass, the Electrical Officer was offering a wager to anyone who could produce more genial and ebullient quartet anywhere in the world. Clinking of glasses, sounds of “cheers” and appreciative chuckles from all of us proved to him the correctness of his assertion. If another proof was required, the beaming and supportive smiles of our voluptuous hostess – Aunty, that is – confirmed the soundness of his hypothesis that there were no better team of four anywhere in the world.

It is at this stage that the Navigating Officer, who was very familiar with Goa (since his father was posted in Goa Shipyard) suggested that whilst no doubt we were enjoying in Vasco, the real scene was to be had in Panjim. The Engineer Officer objected that we were in shorts and would stand out like sore thumbs. At this, the NO responded with great authenticity that in Goa the only people who stood out like sore thumbs were the over-dressed variety. All misgivings, once again swiftly allayed, we soon found ourselves heading by bus towards Panjim and crossing over the Zuari river at Cortalim, by ferry, to reach the real scene.

The Navigating Officer was, of course right. The very air of Panjim was of a perpetual carnival in progress. Bars, foot-tapping music, good food and jovial company made us believe in Einstein’s Theory about Relativity of Time: whilst elsewhere the hours used to pass like snails, here the Time was galloping as if to win the annual Derby. It wasn’t long before we were happily sozzled. An old grandfather clock in the restaurant showed the time to be midnight. Once again, the Navigating Officer, with his authentic knowledge of Goa, confirmed that the clock there had always showed the time to be past midnight, from the days of Alfonso de Albuquerque.

Naturally, the mention of Albuquerque got us thinking about the famous Adega da Velha wine of Goa and we bought one at the local Wine Shop and headed towards Miramar beach to have it peacefully on the sands. It is only after the last drop of the wine had been consumed that we realised that the clock in the restaurant had indeed showed us the correct time, but, like Oliver’s father in Erich Segal’s Love Story, we had refused to see the time of the day!

A quick dash to the bus-stand was wasted since they told us there that the last bus for Panjim had already left an hour back and there would be one available as early as 6:30 in the morning. Also, the last ferry was at midnight and the next one will be available at 7:30 AM.

Those were not the days of the mobile phones and hence there was no way of informing the ship. Finally, the last bit of money that our treasurer, the Engineer Officer had, was spent in taking an auto-rickshaw to INS Mandovi, about five kms away. It was three in the morning when the Duty Chief was woken up, who in turn woke up the Officer of the Day, a young Lieutenant. These two worthies, well versed in handling naval emergencies, needed not much convincing that a way had to be found to get us across to our ship before we sailed off at 7 AM. The naval resourcefulness, therefore, produced one rickety three-tonner, who took another one hour to get ready since he didn’t have adequate fuel to undertake such long journey (anything more than 5 kms is a long journey for any naval transport).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, as we undertook that journey by three-tonner on the longer road route (rather than by ferry at Cortalim), we realised that life finally has its ups and downs and bounces. The wise-guy who often tells us that in life, journey is more important than the destination, has never travelled by a three-tonner; I can now tell you with great authenticity.

When we reached the ship, Special Sea Dutymen for leaving harbour had been piped. In ten minutes, after having bath and changed, we too were closed up, trying to look as prim and proper as our Captain.

If we had thought that our absence from the ship for more than 13 hours had gone unnoticed by the CO, we were soon proved wrong. As soon as we left harbour, he remarked, “I say, I didn’t know you guys too are such fitness freaks (he himself was). Imagine going for a jog early morning even when we were to sail as early as at seven.”

Ignorance is bliss. If only the CO would have known that it was yesterday’s walk that had ended today.

One has to be very careful of and in Goa. It is always the Goan air that gets you.