Category: Humour

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.

Captain (I.N.) (Captain (Indian Navy)

There is, of course, no such rank. However, just like all morals, ethics and virtues are acceptable societal attributes if the majority thinks so, in the armed forces too, the majority service in manpower, Army that is, decides on what is an acceptable rank of the other service (in this case Navy) when they too have a rank spelled and pronounced exactly the same way (the Navy Captain is equivalent to a full Colonel in the Army).

The situation is compounded further when you realise that in the Navy, Captain is a rank as well as an appointment. A CO of a ship or a submarine is referred to as Captain irrespective of his rank. If you are a Sub-Lieutenant to a Commodore, you are in command as a Captain.

But, Captain (I.N.) has some unwanted connotations. I was undergoing the Higher Command Course with the Army at (that time) the College of Combat (no pretences at this being the Army College of Combat; but being the ‘majority‘ service, it had ascribed to itself the prefix ‘the’ and touted its training institution as the College of Combat. It was here that my rank was changed/modified to Captain ‘Within brackets IN’.

In my dreams (Whenever I am in difficult and unfamiliar situations I dream and transport myself to elsewhere. This hobby of mine continued from my school days when during Algebra classes, I transported myself to Switzerland and such other exotic locales) I reached the Pearly Gates. One glance at Saint Peter and his Assistant convinced me that, as in everything in India, the Army had been asked to control ‘the situation’; namely, to check and monitor the heavy influx into the Kingdom of Heaven (KOH). Saint Peter’s Assistant (SPA) was an army man, mustachioed, booted and looking important. After the usual questions regarding name, date of birth, father’s name etc, he asked me: “Rank?”

“Captain” I said.
“Captain In” said SPA.
“Thank you” I said and started walking in.
“Thum” SPA growled, “I asked you if you are a Captain I.N. or a normal Captain.

I cringed at the distinction. Before arriving at the Army’s premier training institution, I had considered myself perfectly normal.

“I too am a perfectly normal Captain” I replied with great dignity.

He re-checked my age and decided otherwise.

“Ah”, it suddenly dawned on him, “You must be a Group Captain”.
“But Sir”, I remonstrated, “I am totally by myself”.
“Stop being funny” he said, “One of the reasons why you are here is because you always tend to be funny whether in class, mess or even during tours and wargames.”

I made a quick mental note not to ask any “funny” questions, even if given another chance to undergo the Army Higher Command Course (AHCC), in my next life.

At this Saint Peter himself intervened, “Let’s hear why you consider yourself qualified to enter the KOH.”

“Well Sir”, I began hopefully, “I was a Col GS/Adm of an important Division in the wargame Zorawar.”
“We know”, said SP and SPA together, “No action whatsoever took place in your Div Sector”.
“By the way”, said SPA with a view to deflate my new acquired Army-styled-ego, “Even if you had done anything better than trying to ‘figure-out’, you would still not be qualified. You know even the Corps and Div Commanders of that exercise haven’t qualified. Only Blue Air Force officers can be permitted into the KOH, on the strength of their ‘pro-active stance’ and ‘pre-emptive strikes’, even though these were outside the wargame rooms.”

“But Sir”, I insisted, “Surely you won’t have failed to notice that I was in the Control (Room) in the last wargame Yudh Abhyas. Won’t that be a ‘positive’ achievement?”

“No, not enough” said SPA with finality.

What a cruel world, I thought. When one is not in ‘Control’, it appears as if those who are there have directly descended from Heaven; but, now that I was there, SPA found it “not enough”.

I decided to speak-up against the prejudices, but in the interest of Jointmanship (incidentally, the Army wants the word itself to be changed to Jointmantank and the Air Force to Jointmanplane), I decided against it. Clutching at the last straw, I blurted excitedly, “I facilitated several AHCC course-mates and even DSs to purchase ship’s canteen items during our visit to Mumbai.”

There was an immediate response as if I had touched a raw nerve. SP turned to SPA and barked, “Tell the cheeky Navy fellow to go to HELL.”

Captain IN became Captain OUT.

The best books on practical leadership in the armed forces that I have read are the Follow Me series by Major General Aubrey S Newman, also known as Red Newman. In one of the chapters, Newman deals with the penchant of senior leadership to go into overdrive to do something petty or insignificant.

To illustrate, he brings out an instance when as a Major General he was going around a base by jeep and he spotted a soldier without a proper haircut. He said he was about to stop and correct the soldier when it occurred to him in a flash that by doing so he would undermine the complete system of hierarchy in his division. He also said that people at higher levels should be circumspect about pointing out such petty things lest these should become high priorities with people many echelons below.

These simple lessons were wasted on some of the officers that I had served with in my nearly 37 years of being in the Indian Navy.

One of them went to one of his ships and, when the tea was served to him, noticed that a tray with kettle of hot water, tea bags, hot milk dispenser, sugar cubes etc was brought in. He commented that the tea-bags perpetually contained the worst quality tea dust. He added that tea made in this manner tasted insipid to him since he otherwise really relished tea. He demanded that next time he visited a ship, he should be served tea brewed in traditional Indian manner complete with Elaichi and Masala.

He must have returned to his office and mentioned this in passing to his FOO (Fleet Operations Officer). Before long, detailed instructions on the making of tea on board had been issued complete with appendices and annexures. Fleet Admin Officer was not to be left behind in this melee to score brownie points. He instituted a return from the ships called ‘Dip Tea Return’ and at last count was merrily pulling up ships whose Dip Tea Returns were still awaited. Soon, the other returns from the ships became less important and ships competed with each other in certifying that for the last so many days at a stretch no one on board had gone anywhere near dip-tea.

Another such incident that comes to my mind is this of a senior officer realising one fine day that the good old tradition of navy personnel wearing shorts or knickers (Dress No. 8) was dying down. He got convinced that what separated (navy) men from (army and air-force) boys were knickers. So, he decreed that people at sea at all times and people in harbour on specified days should bare their limbs, from knees downwards, that is. Or, in short, wear shorts.

The long and short of it was that in the Command, men vied with one another to show as much leg as possible, so what if stockinged. The age old navy tradition of ‘wakey wakey rise and shine, show a leg’ was given a modern look.

When the Command had acquired cent per cent sea-legs, so as to say, the Navy Chief decided to pay us a visit. We were all lined up in knickers and stockings to be introduced to the Chief. The Chief came, he saw and he conquered us with this remark, “I wish I too had as lovely legs as yours to be able to wear knickers.”

We suddenly felt short-changed. Some officers, I concluded, are visionaries; others are knicker-sighted.

P.S. Try having masala-tea in knickers………………Ah, Taj!

P.P.S. On second thought knickers are better suited to do those naval things that you want to do, especially as senior officers, when long pants stand in the way of your plans.

P.P.P.S. Pot bellies and shorts never go……..well, hand-in-hand!

Orphanage in Naval Dockyard, Mumbai; wherein you see Indian Navy ships of all classes and sizes including the aircraft carrier Viraat?

Some of you would tell me that there are many other undiscovered relics in ND (MB) but you could never imagine that an orphanage too existed.

You haven’t seen one? Well, I have. Read on:

As a Lieutenant or Lieutenant Commander you had to do duty in a place (it used to be on the top floor of Fleet Office building) called HDCC (Harbour Defence Control or Coordination Centre); an organisation under the NOIC or Naval Officer-in-Charge. If you had ever done a duty there, you would understand the resemblance of Naval Dockyard to an orphanage.

The boat required to patrol the dockyard waters had its call sign as ‘Baby’ whereas HDCC invariably assumed the call-sign ‘Mother’. In various levels of clandestine threat to Bombay Harbour, as given in the orders, the number of these boats would increase. In case of more than one boat, these were (innovatively?) given callsigns: Baby1, Baby2, Baby3 etc.

The most difficult part of their vigil used to be to keep in touch with HDCC and hence, throughout the night one could hear (if one had an equivalent Punwire communication handset), heart-rending cries of “Mother, this is baby one, over” and “Baby this is mother over”.

You get the illusion of an orphanage straightway. Want to see another illusion. Well, watch people dancing in a video and mute the music; you would be surprised how funny it looks.

Some of these were due to vagaries of radio communication whereas some of these, at times, were not so unintentional. Taste this that was recorded during my watch at HDCC when I was posted in WATT (B) or Weapons Acceptance Trials Team (Bombay):

“Baby this is mother, over”
No response. Only a crackling sound.

Again: “Baby, baby, this is mother, mother, over”
Still no response. More crackling noise.

The HDCC communication sailor now looking at me for effect: “Baby, this is mother, radio check over”
No response. More crackling noise.

Communication sailor about to give up: “Baby, this is mother, nothing heard from you, out”

Loud and clear response from baby: “Mother this is baby, nothing heard from you also, out”

Click sound of switching off the set to “preserve battery”!

This is not apocryphal. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the First, a pussy cat of one of the maids of the queen, on one of its unrestricted sojourns in the Windsor Castle, ran beneath the queen’s throne and startled the queen. The queen, having as good a sense of humour as many in my Facebook group called ‘Humour In And Out Of Humour’ or HIAOOU for short, decreed that the pussy cat be permitted to stay in the castle as long as it kept the castle free of mice.

And that’s how the pussy cat gained respectability and the famous nursery rhyme came about.

This 16th century tradition soon found its way to RN (Royal Naval) ships. And since we in the Indian Navy eagerly lapped up everything that the Brits had to offer, every IN ship had a cat of its own. Sailors on long sailings away from home comforted themselves with the company of a pussy cat, having left their wives ashore.

Pussy-cats also came in handy with the junior most sailors on board and the cabin boys or civilian bearers. Since these low-down worthies were kicked about by almost everyone on board, they now had the pussy-cat to kick; somewhat similar to how sailors in solitary detention (as a punishment) are given hemp to pick.

I was made the Ship’s Commander on the aircraft carrier Viraat in June 1994. The ship was under refit. But, within three months we got ready and by November of that year, we embarked the air squadrons.

During the refit, the living conditions had deteriorated. Sailors and officers were a few but rats and cats had increased their population. In order that the rats won’t attack all parts of their bodies whilst they slept, the sailors had encouraged cats to multiply. I don’t know how Noah had managed, but my sailors were convinced that the only way to manage the deluge (of rats) on board was to have pussies everywhere.

Now, this experiment was working very fine (for them, that is) until the aircraft came on board. And that’s the time I discovered, to my horror that one feline variety hated the other: the pussy-cats hated the White Tigers (Sea Harriers) and vice versa.

First imagine the change of scene as visualised by the pussy-cats. They were purring and meeowing without competition and everyone loved them. And then the White Tigers (successors of what my friend Sareshth Kumar Sir flew with blissful abandon) arrived on the scene and grred and howled. The only way to see things is to step down to the level of pussy-cats and feel how unfair life can be.

Now, shift the scene to the White Tigers; an unenviable track record of ruling the Indian seas since 1960. You are the pilot of one and you carry on your shoulders the proud legacy of having driven fear of God in the hearts of East Pakistanis in Cox Bazaar, Chittagong, and such equally exotic names as Mongla, Khulna and Chalna. And you are about to make a vertical landing on Viraat and find your spot already occupied by a pussy cat. I mean, you can be excused to conclude that this is not the right time and place for pussies.

So, it was left to the Ship’s Commander to have the Viraat flight deck as catless as possible. Many of you who have routinely dealt with pussies would tell me that nothing can be easier. All you have to do is to call the Master Chief Bosun’s Mate and tell him, “Master Chief Saab, starting tomorrow I don’t want to see pussy-cats on board.” And then Master Chief Saab smartly salutes and goes to mess-decks, musters all the pussy-cats in smart files and marches them off the gangway and tells them, “Bye, bye cats, please find yourself another home; Sea Tigers have come to live on board.”

There is a huge gap between fantasy and practice, however. Getting cats is easy; but getting rid of them has resulted into innumerable jokes and disasters. I had a job at hand. All leadership lessons that I had come across don’t ever teach you how to be DoP (Director of Pussies) on an aircraft carrier.

Sailors were emotionally involved with them. Their way of looking at it was that the pussy-cats stood by them in their hour of need; and to get rid of them at the expense of some White Tigers with doubtful capability to keep the mess decks clear of mice wasn’t a wise step at all.

Finally, tough measures were called for by yours truly. I counselled and cajoled, and coerced and shook them up that having Viraat cat-less was in national interest. I was also fed up of young pilots, during air briefings, greeting me with cat-calls. Indeed, they had told me that if I don’t do anything about it, they, the air boys, would have no choice but to boycatt – sorry – boycott me altogether.

The exercise took seven days. Away from the eyes of SPCA and Maneka Gandhi, cats were put into gunny bags and let out in the streets of Mumbai, to keep them mice free.

The original nursery rhymes from the days of Queen Bess went like this:

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?
I’ve been to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do there?
I frightened a little mouse, under the chair.

Nearly four centuries later, I was to realise that I was the “little mouse” as the Ship’s Commander. QE I was made of sterner stuff. I had come close to losing my job. And I was “frightened” indeed.

(Reliving a memory of nearly four decades ago)

JOM is a Junior Officers’ Mess on board ships. Sometimes, as was the case on Himgiri, there is more than one JOM: the Upper JOM for the senior amongst the junior officers and Lower JOM to indicate your status of being as low down in hierarchy as worms. Nevertheless, the middle word of the expansion of JOM, as far we were concerned, signified our having realized a life time aim, that of becoming a commissioned officer in the armed forces of our great nation. On board the Cadet Training Ship Delhi and Midshipman Training Ship Tir, we were as far away from becoming officers as Man was from landing on the Moon before Neil Armstrong actually did that small step for himself and giant leap for mankind. But, now we had arrived.

And, to give credit to the Navy, it treats you like officers too. During your watch at sea and in harbour, you have the charge, for example, of a modern Leander class frigate costing the nation – at that time – nearly a thousand crore rupees. Nothing moves on the ship without your permission. You are Captain of the frigate for the time being; empowered by the Regs Navy to be in command. Sailors, however senior they are, ask your permission to proceed ashore and you are responsible for them and everything that happens on board.

So, the last thing that you want is some senior one coming to you and bullshitting you about the way you live, similar to how they used to do in the Academy days checking your toothpaste caps etc.

One evening, however, we had an unexpected visitor to our Lower JOM: the Captain of the ship himself: Commander NN Anand or Baby Anand as he used to be called. We were lying on our bunks in various stages of dress and undress; mostly undress. Having the Captain standing in our midst was unimaginable. However, it was happening to us. We sprang out of the bunks somewhat similar to the goalies in the recently concluded World Cup during the shootouts. However, our Captain was determined to score one goal after another.

Since I was the tallest of the lot and most visible, he turned towards me and said, “Hey you, let me see your towel.”

The Navy trains its officers well. When they are faced with potentially dangerous situations, their minds don’t close like quick shut-down valves. I was the first one to seize the opportunity and the lone hanging towel in the JOM and claim it as my own. That left my other seven comrades towel-less. I had that gleeful look on my face that sometimes you see on the face of a Buzkashi contestant who seizes the buz (goat) and carry it to the goal.

However, this joy was short-lived since the next question was to Billoo, “And you, let me see your bed sheet.” And, I espied through the corner of my eyes that Billoo had grabbed the multi-coloured and multi-stained bed sheet that was nearest to him and claimed it as his own.

Baby Anand seemed to have come prepared to put us to shame. If we had thought that not having enough towels and bed-sheets between us was embarrassing, next he was asking such intimate questions as about the whereabouts of our pillows and pillow-covers, kerchiefs, and even under-wears and vests.

The great emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar when he was exiled to Burma wrote his famous ghazal there that had a line, “Do ghaz zameen naa mili kuye yaar mein.” Likewise, eight of us in Lower JOM (It had never appeared so ‘Low’ in our estimate earlier), didn’t find two yards of zameen to bury our mortification.

There is a Bombay Dyeing show room in Colaba opposite the mandir. All of us were sent there to the shop to buy clean bed-sheets, pillows, pillow covers, and towels; whereas another departmental store became richer by a few hundred bucks with eight young acting sub-lieutenants buying kerchiefs and underclothing.

The next afternoon, CO Beas Cdr Shivamani was a guest of our CO for lunch. One would think that the COs of ships when they meet over drinks and lunch have such important things to discuss as ship-handling and navigation and the international maritime situation. But, nay, discussing the hygiene and living style of their junior officers appear to be high in the agenda. And how do we know that? Well, the same evening, as we walked along Colaba Causeway, we found our course-mates led by Minhas, frantically purchasing towels, bed sheets and pillow covers at the Bombay Dyeing.

One good deed deserves another.