Category: Navy – Nostalgia

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.

Two small explanations are required for the non-naval personnel to understand this anecdote:

First, what’s a Mids Board? Well, a Mid’s Board is a very detailed oral examination (viva) held at the end of one’s Midshipman tenure of about six months; a Midshipman is a rank between Cadet and a commissioned officer in the rank of Acting Sub-Lieutenant. Questions related to Bridgeman-ship, seamanship and all other aspects that one is trained on during one’s stint as Midshipman are normally asked.

Secondly, ships, submarines and other crafts at sea, at night and in low visibility exhibit various lights (normally Red for port or left, Green for Starboard or right, and white for main steaming lights on foremast and main mast and stern light. These lights are in accordance with International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972. These lights can be exhibited in varying brilliance (for range or distance at which they can be seen) and varying combination to indicate restrictions in movement that the vessel displaying them has. For example, two Red lights in a vertical line would indicate a vessel not under command.

Normally, the Mids Board has three members; the senior most being the President. The drift of the questions is naturally the prerogative of the President.

Each President has some favourite subject or the other. In our case Captain Sethi’s (an ace navigator) favourite was to grill the Mids (snotties; a mishipman is often referred to as Snotty since he is perpetually snivelling especially when a hard question is asked) on the subject of Lights and Shapes displayed by ships and craft.

Those who appeared on the first day returned to tell us that a certain Moore’s illustrated book on Lights was his favourite and he’d open the book at random and ask the snotty to describe the scenario depicted by a combination of lights; eg, two vessels engaged in RAS or Replenishment At Sea at night.

During the entire night we mugged up these scenarios. We were then seeing more lights than we had ever seen in our lives. Now, if only those scenarios would stay in our minds.

The Gunroom (Midshipmen are not allowed in the Wardroom for officers but they generally pass their spare time in the Gunroom; the name came about since revolvers and pistols belonging to the ship are generally kept in a locked and glasses cupboard so that they can be sighted during the rounds) was agog with all kinds of complicated questions regarding the Lights. We even made several jokes about these. For example, the answer to the question: ‘if you sight a Red Light to your left and Green Light to the right coming towards you, what do you make out of it? is: ‘It is merely a sea plane flying upside down’.

With this new knowledge gained on the night before the viva, some of us did very well. Others were as confused as snotties make it a point to be.

One of the latter variety was my friend PLG Manu. He went in with confidence to face the board. As he answered a few simple scenarios, he noticed that instead of gaining confidence he was losing the con thing in increasingly larger measures. It is because the qs were becoming tougher and tougher.

Finally, the Moore’s page depicted a curious combination of Red, Green, White, Yellow lights and for good effect a Blue light too added.

Captain Sethi asked him to unravel the mystery. Manu started blinking and also started seeing some invisible lights. He shook his head from side to side. But, Captain Sethi was insistent he should venture a guess.

Finally, Manu saw the light that Moses had seen on the Mount. And he blurted the answer that should have been clear to him all along,  “Sir, it is evident that a ship has rammed into a Disco”.

Generally, the best Midshipman is given the Sword of Honour (a sword is carried by officers in the Navy with their ceremonial uniforms). It was later learnt that they (the Board) had decided to give PLG the sword…….but, alas, not as an honour and at an unspecified place.

Like any other young man wanting to join the armed forces, I was mighty impressed with Netaji Subhash Chander Bose. Though not half as qualified as Nandu Chitnis of my Facebook group ‘Humour In And Out Of Uniform’ (HIAOOU) wherein Nandu has single-handedly destroyed all enemies within thousands of miles of India, Netaji could have really won us independence just as Nandu destroyed Karachi and won us war against Pakistan. Sadly for the bespectacled Subhash, HIAOOU had not yet been conceived and winning and destroying anything wasn’t as easy.

What connection do I have with NS? Only this that after finishing my bridge watch-keeping training on board Indian Naval Ship Himgiri, I was sent to Calcutta to bring a 400 tons LS HSD (Low Sulphur High Speed Diesel) tanker for Naval Dockyard Bombay, along with two other officers. One of them was the late DB Roy and the other was Sushil, the submariner, who retired as C-in-C South. This tanker was being built in a Yard in Calcutta and we had to accept it and sail it back to Bombay before the monsoons.

We were accommodated in an establishment called INS Netaji Subhash. It was a laid back no-hurry-to-do-anything type of establishment and as far from Netaji’s ‘Kadam kadam badaye ja khushi ke geet gaaye jaa’ as anyone can get. The establishment had decided that doing everything at snail’s pace was as good as reliving the memory of the great Netaji.

The Wardroom had some of the old relics that had been looted from the East Pakistan five years ago. One of the officers who was on permanent duty there told us that after these were displayed in the wardroom, these were re-looted by a number of officers who were appointed there as Mess Secretaries and PMCs; in exactly the manner paintings on the tanker Shakti that was built for the Indian Navy in a Yard in West Germany vanished after her first commission.

The Wardroom had other old relics too. These would be sitting on the bar stools in the wardroom between 7:30 to 10:30 PM every evening and prove that they could take all the three Xs from the Hercules rum bottles that they consumed and post these against their names, presence of mind and Netaji Subhash like qualities. The three of us too joined their august company in the evenings.

Sometimes, life was supposed to be infused into the rag-tag groups of officers that had assembled in Netaji Subhash for some vague purpose or the other. One of these was this All Calcutta Officers Navy Hockey Tournament that was held on the weekends in the month of April. First of all I was surprised to know that INS Netaji Subhash had so many outlying units attached to it that a tournament with that kind of lofty name could be held. Secondly, the three of us with a few other temporary duty officers were asked to form a team. And thirdly, since I was a lion-hearted (Singh) Punjabi, the others in our team took it for granted that I knew how to play hockey.

It took me very little time to learn the game. Even if the business end of my stick rarely touched the ball, it made not-so-inadvertent contact with the shins of quite a few of the other team players. We won the tournament – as the expression goes – by hook or simply by crook. It was decided that the rolling trophy would be presented to us in the month-end Captain’s Divisions the next day, that is, Friday.

That night our joining the old relics in the wardroom of INS Netaji Subhash was very sentimental. The old relics kept telling us how superbly we played. The opponents stealthily nursing their shins admitted that we had a unique technique not ever mastered by the likes of Dhyan Singh and others. To cut a long story short, several rounds in the name of the great Greek/Roman warrior Hercules were called for and some of us became sort of unfit to attend the next day morning Divisions. One of us – no names at this juncture  – was also supposed to be the Guard Commander.

These were special Divisions; ladies too were invited as spectators. Officers and ladies had started taking their seats under the awning whilst the Divisions assembled. And after the Parade Commander took his post, he screamed with all the lung power given to Bengalis that nearly won us independence, “Guard onder laayo” (March in the guard).

Our friend, the Guard Commander, not used to the meridian where Calcutta is situated, took it for granted that the guard will be called for at 7:55 AM, five minutes before the Colours, and had remembered to set up his alarm at 7 AM to pierce through his condition caused by the Greek warrior and bring him back to mother earth named after the Indian warrior. Little did he know that the proceedings at Netaji Subhash were an hour earlier.

Ten minutes before the guard was to march in, one of the Gunnery sailors had got the brainwave that the Guard Commander had not made his appearance (Gunners are very good at ‘brainwaves’ and had run up to the first floor of the building adjoining the Parade Ground (erstwhile battle ground of war named hockey tournament) to somehow get him to his feet).

The Parade Commander’s call of ‘Guard andar laayo’ at 6:55 AM coincided with his (Guard Commander’s) donning the tunic though still unbuttoned. In panic he ran to the veranda and screamed back, “Abhi laaya shrimaan” (Bringing the guard in, Sir). With this whilst still buttoning his tunic with one hand, holding his sword in the other, he ran down the veranda and steps and shouted his command from the first floor itself, “Guard baayen se tez chal” (Guard, quick march, by the left). The guard started marching, the drummer gave the marching beat, and the Guard Commander joined in just before the guard halted in front the saluting dais.

After the Parade was brought to vishraam (at-ease) by the Parade Commander, a GI (what will we do without them?) marched up to the Guard Commander, smartly saluted him and brought some semblance of uniformed service in the wantonly appearance of the Guard Commander in about 30 secs. These worthy gentlemen (GIs, that is) can change people’s appearance in less than a second when they want to; but that is another story!)

Finally, after the Commanding Officer Netaji Subhash took the salute, inspected the Guard and Divisions, proficiency awards were given to a few sailors and then the Hockey Rolling Trophy was presented to DB Roy.

As he marched (!) from the ranks of the ‘spare officers’ standing on the left of the dais facing the parade; I too had a Gunners style ‘brainwave’ and I understood why was it called a ‘rolling’ trophy. DBR rolled on to in front of the dais to receive it, almost rolled off when it was handed over to him and then rolled back to regain his position in the rank and file of ‘spare’ officers swaying in all possible directions.

Straightway after the Divisions, we rolled back into our rooms and decided to break all ties with Hercules; a historic decision that lasted with us for quite some time……..until the evening that is.

So you have finished reading Parts I to III of this serialised post (If not, read ‘Gunners Too Are Human – Part I’, ‘Gunners Too Are Human – Part II’ and ‘Gunners Too Are Human – Part III’) and are now ready for Part IV? Well, fasten your seat belts; here goes:

I don’t know if it has changed now; but, during our times, Gunnery Officers also used to be responsible for ceremonials. Hence, somehow, ceremonies used to get into their veins. Everything was to be done with great pomp and show. C-in-C West was retiring and the Fleet was to sail for giving him a befitting farewell. A mass briefing was held at the Fleet Office and FGO was given the responsibility of explaining the finer points of all the ceremonies and accompanying manoeuvres. He and his team had prepared one chart after the other and all these were being explained with a large pointer. All of these were also parts of WFXP or Western Fleet Exercise Programme (as annexures). I hadn’t understood some of the stuff. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts about Gunners, clarity at either end is what the Gunner likes the most. But, now, as I looked around, I noticed that one entire end wasn’t clear at all. Finally, one of the senior COs could not resist blurting out, “FGO, if you have finished making us totally confused about these manoeuvres, may we now go back to the ships and try to figure these out by ourselves?”

My Officer-in-Charge in Trials Team for acceptance of weapons and sensors in the Navy, however, was very clear about a few things: One was that he never diluted the role of his team, ie, WATT (B). He was very quick on the uptake and quickly grasped the crux of most problems without wasting much time brooding over these. Two, he enjoyed life like a true Gunner and here too he was quick on the uptake of a different kind. So whilst late Lieutenant Joy Banerjee (Trials Officer (Gunnery)) busied himself with trials of guns and associated radars and fire-control systems, our OiC looked forward to taking direct charge of these trials on Make-and-Mend days (Wednesdays and Saturdays when the navy used to have half days in a six days week). And, he made sure that his direct intervention would be just before 12:30 P.M. when most wardrooms would have PLD or Pre Lunch Drinks (PLD is a naval invention for which the Army and the Air Force do not have equivalents).

Indeed, under his active leadership as a true gunner, there was hardly any occasion of a gin-pennant being hoisted by any ship, craft or submarine in harbour, that we hadn’t made use of. (When an officer gets promoted or obtains an honour, he hoists a gin pennant on the mast to hurriedly invite all those who can see it; once again a naval tradition). The gin pennant looks like this:

One day, Joy reported to the Officer-in-Charge the result of his trials on the 4.5 inch twin gun of a Leander class frigate. The OiC said to remind him on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, I had done trials of their Electronic Warfare equipment and I too reported to him. He told me the same as he told Joy.

We reported the deficiencies to him on Saturday morning and he said we must visit the ship and help her get over these deficiencies. That afternoon, Joy (even though a Gunner himself) and I had made up our minds that we would be the road block in our OiC’s pathway to happiness at someone’s expense. Anyway, first we visited the EW compartment and then all the gun positions and Joy and I kept suggesting the ways to get over the anomalies. Suddenly when the OiC suggested that we could go somewhere where we could sit across the table (!) for better comprehension of the GO and EWO of the Leander, we knew it was time for us to intervene. Now, everybody would know that he was suggesting the wardroom where Heineken would soon start flowing. So, Joy and I pretended that we had left our Trial Diaries, by mistake (!) in the office and that we would visit the ship later to brief and counsel them.

The OiC, therefore, had no choice but to follow us to the gangway to beat a hasty retreat. However, here like Jeffrey Archer’s famous book, there was a twist in the tale. As we reached the gangway, we found that the brow had been removed for crane movement to load missiles on a Durg. Enquiry from the OOD revealed that it would be quite some time before the brow would be put back.

We announced for the GO and had no choice but to descend to the wardroom. The sweet click sounds of Heineken cans opening was music to our OiC’s ears. The ship’s Gunnery Officer learnt a lot that afternoon about not just 4.5 inch gun but all his weapons including small arms. The Gunnery Trials Officer, Joy Banerjee was much sobered after guzzling each can of the brew. And, your truly learnt a lesson for life: there is no such thing as an unlucky Gunner. Much before Paulo Coelho came on the scene, Gunners knew that if you are determined to get your heart’s desire, the elements conspire to make it happen.

P.S. I met him after a span of nearly 30 years recently and found that he had given up drinking altogether.