They say, one’s first job, first salary and first love are never forgotten. When we passed out from NDA in the Spring Term of 1978, the naval cadets were instructed to report to INS Mysore at Bombay on 18 June 1978. After a very short break at home, I packed my trunk and boarded the train to Bombay and to my delight found a couple of course mates (Ashokan, SS Chandran, SamT, etc) on the same train. We arrived at VT Station and were bundled into a waiting 3-Tonner, which took us via Tiger gate into the Naval Basin. That morning as the sun was kissing the tops of the Bombay skyline, quietly bobbing in the water, lay the leviathans of the seventh largest Navy in the world.
On Cruiser Wharf lay the Submarine Depot ship, Submarine Rescue Vessel and passenger ferries (Elsie, Marie and Nancy). On Barrack wharf were row upon row of Missile Boats (The same ones that decimated Karachi Harbour in 1971) and Seaward Defence Boats. Further up came the submarine Flotillas, the Frigates (both anti-aircraft and anti-submarine) including some rather old-fashioned British hand-me-downs (Kirpan, Kuthar). Then we passed the Torpedo and Duncan docks (built 1779). On the Inner Breakwater stood the Mine Sweepers and a couple of Landing Ships (Tank). The Petya Class ships looked most handsome and deadly with their menacing silhouettes. Next came the Cruiser Drydock on our way to the South Breakwater jetty on which the giants were tied up. There was Vikrant (the Flag ship), the huge Fleet Tankers and the Goliaths Delhi and Mysore. Pinnaces, Captain’s Cutters and Whalers worked their way, criss-crossing each other in the water. I was seeing these magnificent beasts for the first time, but some of the guys were rattling off names and pointing out features, which were hitherto unknown “See those torpedo tubes.”, “That’s an anti-aircraft turret.” and “That flag is the naval ensign.”
Meet the Mysore
The 3-Tonner deposited us unceremoniously in front of INS Mysore, with the famous court of arms (the two-Headed Phoenix, symbol of the Mysore Maharajas). Mysore was a monstrosity, the T-Rex of the Indian Navy, the ship that had taken two torpedo hits in WWII and survived. It was a battleship cruiser with a full roster of guns – the three six-inch triple gun turrets (which gave it its diabolical look) that could pulverise a city like Mumbai, the anti-aircraft turrets covering all possible angles and the smaller Gatling guns for close-up action. Up close it looked like a giant Godzilla insect with its numerous tentacles working near its belly. But it was actually a city within the city of Bombay, which came to life every day at 0800 hrs with its own rush hour, when about 600 officers and sailors would begin climbing up the gangway. Mysore’s gravitational pull not only pulled its ship staff but also hundreds of dockyard workers and plenty of visitors including film stars for evening parties. It had its own magical wall separating the cadets from the rest of the ship. Imagine commanding a battleship the size of three city blocks. Mysore was so big and resplendent that it didn’t need a street address, it stood majestically on South Break Water.
As we began sidling up the gangway, I began to wonder – ‘the cadets of the 54th course were ready to enter the Mysore. Question was whether the Mysore was ready to receive the cadets?’ We soon learnt that Mysore was also a safe haven for cadets to get lost in its labyrinth of compartments, hatches, citadels, accommodation, machinery areas, stores and alleyways. It had its own bakery, barber’s shop, dhobi ghat, dental centre, canteen, and Admiral’s cabin. The ship had a lot of redundancy built into it. It had two Bridges with two steering posts, two Operations rooms, Two Captain’s cabins, etc. The kitchen was called the galley, the Cadet’s quarters – the Chest Flat, the ante-room – the gun room, the raised deck- the poop deck, the front deck – the forecastle or foxle, the weather deck hatches – booby hatches, the bilges (where the bare bones of the ship reside) and so on and so forth. Mysore’s portholes were warm and jewel like, her alleyways thrummed with life and the indefatigable permanence of her aged weather deck fittings softened by the catwalk lights became strangely reassuring. But it wasn’t designed to accommodate 75 cadets, most of whom (the NDA lot) excelled in high athletics and hilarious drama. Life at the bottom rung of the Navy had its own share of discomfort, delusion and disparity, as we were soon going to find out.
Later on I met up with Ajay Mehta, Banerjee, Aiyappa, Kulkarni, Ganesh, Bhaskar and others. That evening the Sub-of-the-Gun (SLt Sandeepan Banerjee, H/50) enlightened some of us about the Navy. “You will become sub-lieutenants after about a year and Lieutenants in 2-3 years thereafter. But then you’ll be stuck as Lieutenants for about 8 to 10 years till your next promotion.” Eight to ten years!” I thought to myself privately – my dream of becoming Admiral fading rapidly!
I noticed to my absolute delight that the Navy did everything ‘bottom’s-up’ style. Remember the Nazi-style drill we learnt on the Drill square at NDA, where we had to bang the soles of our boots, feel the electric shock travel upwards, shout ‘ek-do-teen-ek’, and continue stomping around till our brains were comfortably numb? Well, all that was down the hatch! I passed the Navy drill in about 15 minutes, with brain intact. For some it took a considerable length of time to unlearn what we learnt at NDA and re-learn it the Navy way.
The self-proclaimed leader of the NDA bunch was ‘Bollard’. (To me he looked like a towing bollard with moustache twirled upwards like staghorn.) He was dumb enough to carry two six-inch shells for punishment, while most of us struggled with one. Bollard could best be described as bull-headed, wacky and totally up his own alley. Many of his tantrums were brought on when it became apparent to him that nautical sciences of any sort was beyond him, forever. He was normally kept on a leash but once in a while some idiot would unleash him to do devastating deeds “Oye, Kuch kar ke dikha yaar!”
Bollard would frequently display cognitive deficiency, delusional behaviour and loss of memory. He would wake up early every morning, stand on the ramparts of the Chittorgadh fort and yell at the top of his voice: ‘Jago, Jago, Mevado, Jago’ much to the consternation of his sleeping course mates. Then he would ride on his imaginary horse ‘Chetak’ and bring everyone to life by poking and prodding them. In NDA he had become infamous for breaking one window pane in his squadron for every exam he flunked in. When he passed out, most of the windows had broken panes. He used to be rather kicked about his own brand of lunacy.
Unknown to the Naval Authorities on board, the marriage of NDA and Direct Entry cadets was solemnised by a very strange ritual. The DEs happened to join the ship two days after the NDA baddies reported. Under the leadership of ‘Bollard’, the Baddies mustered the DEs and gave them a thrashing of their lives. They were made to hop, skip and jump. Bollard had six planets orbiting around him in various gymnastic poses. Their meagre six months of training at impeccable Naval Academy hadn’t prepared them for this scurrilous act of chicanery – which they never forgot, and which they understandably view with considerable trepidation and disgust to this day. For the next four weeks they were made to sweep and swab the Chest Flat and serve meals to their NDA brethren. It was only later that they came to their senses and began demanding equal rights among half-brothers.
The cadets were incarcerated in the Chest Flat and the Gun Room. Any thoughts of upgrading from the NDA style of cabins were quickly dispelled. By day we would have classes on the tables and at night we would sleep on and under the same tables, benches, chairs, etc. When the heavens above turned indigo, the Chest Flat became a jamboree of talking, laughing, studying, shouting (not to mention Bollard bench-pressing a mal-nutritioned DE) loquacious brand ambassadors from various parts of the country. Finally, we would fall asleep – but how? To experience first-hand pipe-down on board Mysore try this: Take a bed sheet and pillow, spread it on the dining table after dinner. If the table has dirty plates, spread the cloth under the table and go to sleep. Have your wife and kids pretend they are watch keepers and enter the room every two hours at night to put on the lights and make screechy noises by opening and closing cupboards and lockers. In the morning ask your friendly neighbour to shout “Jago, Jago….”
The ubiquitous uniform of the sea cadets was a navy blue short and navy blue shirt. Supply officers preferred to call it ‘Shorts cotton blue ready-made with buckles two numbers for cadet’s use of’. To anyone else it would look like a boring uniform, worn by boring cadets. But the uniform and NDA style haircut provided excellent anonymity and self-sufficiency. Mysore had a huge teakwood deck, which had to be holy-stoned every day and kept spotlessly clean, enough to make any germ reconsider warfare. And we had to spend our salad days doing exactly this. To holystone, one had to genuflect on one’s knees and scrub the wood with limestone brick and sea water till the wood turned white, then mop it with fresh water and finally wipe it dry. For evening parties, we would have to rig up a huge awning to cover the quarterdeck and dress it up with garlands of lights, red bunting and ‘Answer Pennants’ of red and white. In the evening, officers in their splendiferous dress No 6As would escort gracious ladies and have a whale of a time.
In a typical case of ‘Na rahegi baas, na bajegi basuri’ someone came up with the brilliant idea of disposing one stone per day into the water, before returning them to the store keeper on completion of job. The trick paid off. Soon the store was practically depleted of holy stones before the store keeper got a handle on it. He couldn’t find anyone to blame because everyone looked alike.
As with any other naval supply, to indent more holy stones, the Storekeeper would have to make an in-house indent on the Ship’s Supply Officer on Form 52, who would wait till the end of the month to consolidate the list on Form 152 with other requirements before putting it up for CO’s approval on Form 252. The list would leave the ship the following month to Base Stores Officer on Form 352, who would analyse, dissect and generally cut it to size before forwarding it to the Material Superintendent on Form 462, who would place an order on the Supplier on Form 562 asking for six quotations on Form 662, who would supply it after six month and the item would finally reach the ship a full year after the requirement was first discovered. Try following this procedure at home when your wife asks you to get a new cell phone for her!
The Baby Blue uniform also proved to be a survival kit for me. The Fleet Commander rarely missed his morning walk on the jetty that Mysore was made fast to. One morning when I was mopping the deck with a squeegee, he shouted from across the jetty “Cadet, push the squeegee AWAY from you, not towards you!” Standing on the jetty he gave me a dummy demonstration. I nodded in acknowledgement and tried doing it his way. After a few tries I found it easier and more efficient to complete the job my way. So I waited for him to walk a little ahead and began pulling the squeegee towards me. What followed was serendipitously waiting to happen. To my amazement the Ol’ man turned around and came running back towards the ship screaming ‘Cadet, cadet!” I almost fell over the ship side. I quickly realised that he would make me walk the plank, so I did what prudence dictated. I dropped the squeegee and ran into the bowels of the mighty Mysore and was consumed completely out of his sight. It took about an hour to muster the 75 cadets from the nooks and crannies of the ship, but to his dismay nobody owned up! The uniform and haircut had saved me, not to mention the training at NDA, which preserved me from getting gobbled up by a very large sized Admiral!
Shortly thereafter, the same Fleet Commander decided to carry out the Annual Inspection of INS Mysore. As he approached the Cadet’s Platoon, the first thing I noticed was that he was looking for someone suitable to ask a question. The second thing I noticed that he asked a question which I couldn’t answer “Who is your Commander-in-Chief?” (I knew the name but I couldn’t recall V Adm Chesty’s numerous decorations.) The third thing I noticed (and this completed my disintegration) was that he was zeroing in on me. I briefly toyed with the idea of falling on my bayonet and pretending to be dead. However, to my relief the chap standing next to me gave the correct answer and saved my day. For the next 26 years of my service, I would always look up the name and decorations of the incumbent C-in-C and commit them to rote.
We were lucky to witness the last sailing of Mysore, before it was decommissioned. For this, the ship had to embark victuals, stores, ammunition, etc. Who better to do it than the cadets? It was a daunting task. Everybody pepped up Bollard and he was quite happy to carry double the load, while the rest of us dealt with the lighter stuff. When it came to loading the provisions, a couple of cartons of fruit-cocktail tins, packets of cheese slices, tins of biscuits and milk tetra packs were quietly whisked away into the Chest Flat as personal reward. From then onwards, the private rum sessions that went on late into the night on the poop deck were richer with a new variety of small eats.
During one ceremonial parade on board, Bollard got caught wearing pink underwear, which showed through the white terricot material of his uniform. After the parade all cadets were made to strip their trousers on the quarterdeck for inspection. Unbelievably, there were some who were not wearing anything at all, some wearing green, brown and red submarines and only a handful wearing white innerwear. The Ship’s Commander nearly died of fright when he bent down to inspect the bottoms of his unwieldy warriors. Accordingly the defaulters were excused shore leave. The duty watch at the gangway was informed and everyone retired to their respective jobs. Not to be outdone, in the evening a couple of defaulters decided to monkey-crawl on the aft hawser from ship to jetty, go on French leave, see a movie and get back to the ship by nightfall. After decking up suitably, they monkey-crawled on the rope from ship to shore. Unknown to them, the engine room had begun pumping out effluence and bilges into the water. The water surrounding the ship was thick with untreated poop and sludge. Bosun lost his grip on the rope and fell straight into the goo. When he walked up the gangway, the duty staff could only see the whites of his eyes! It was simply hilarious.
Before we finally wound up with Mysore, it was Motivala’s (A/54) idea (I think) to put on our cadet’s uniform and tear the shirts off each other’s back, while swearing eternal friendship for the rest of our lives. On the whole, our courtship with INS Mysore had a high dose of adventure. However, the bond of ‘course-mate-hood’ survived the individual counter-personalities, numerous cock-fights, not to mention the late night drinking sessions and the boisterous acts of vandalism of breaking into the officer’s pantry for food stuff late at night.
When we finally signed off from Mysore, the Indian Navy was waiting for us to join other ships of the Fleet, waiting with our names written all over it.
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