Afloat on patriotism

It was a little before midnight and a gentle breeze was blowing over the Arabian Sea. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Defence Min...

It was a little before midnight and a gentle breeze was blowing over the Arabian Sea. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Defence Minister George Fernandes were catching up on their sleep and orders to speak softly had been passed down to the last sailor on the ship.The day had witnessed hectic activity as one after the other 10 Sea Harrier aircraft took off from the flight deck of INS Viraat, India8217;s only aircraft carrier and sea superiority ship. But at night it was soothingly quiet and I stood at the ski jump the incline in the front of the ship which gives the aircraft a push in the air. The breeze was gentle and I spread my arms out wide, looking up at a million stars.

8220;Hey Leonardo! This is not the Titanic. It is a battle ship. Don8217;t fall overboard,8221; teased my new friend, a young lieutenant. Embarrassed, I walked down the 12-degree incline and joined him. We walked together through the 750-feet-long runway of the aircraft carrier. We crossed Shakti Sinha, the prime minister8217;s personalsecretary. He was talking to a group of naval officers, exchanging views about ships and their rolling and pitching.

The Harrier pilots were supervising the movement of their aircraft to the hangers in the belly of the ship and the chopper pilots were preparing for the next morning8217;s events. I had been talking to a cross-section of officers and sailors throughout the day about the murky waters the Navy was wading through. The sailors said they felt bad about the government taking away the job of a man but felt miserable about the sacking of an institution: that of the Chief of Naval Staff. 8220;The saving grace is that his successor is a good person,8221; they added. The sailors and officers also insisted that none of this was their business, for they were there to keep the navy afloat.

Dirty uniforms, sweaty faces but with a smile on their lips, they actually stood by all that stuff about dying for the motherland, a concept almost alien to most of us. Here were these sailors, thousands of miles from theirhomes, defying nature by living in the sea or taking off from sea into the air, at times suffering sub-human conditions yet they only had good things to say about the Navy. I had met some men in spanking white uniforms, tons of brass on their shoulders, sitting in air-conditioned offices and homes in Delhi saying how bad the Navy had become in the past decade.

About a decade ago, our Navy had been internationally acclaimed as one of the best in the world. Today, our own officers admit that it is not even a shadow of its former self. 8220;Our ships are old, weapon systems need to be upgraded and we need a nuclear submarine. And look at the top brass, they are fighting among themselves, calling each other names and neglecting the Navy. It is time they clean up their act,8221; an officer told me.

8220;Strange are the ways of this world,8221; I thought, climbing up another set of vertical ladders and banging my head against the low ceiling for the nth time. Taking off the impressive Viraat cap that the Navy hadpresented us, I massaged my head. But I was too excited to sleep. On my first and probably only visit to the ship, I did not intend wasting time sleeping. I wanted to explore each and every cabin, each and every nook and corner. It was a different matter that it had taken the ship8217;s second-in-command a week to do that, by his own admission.

The Navy8217;s maintenance of this ancient aircraft carrier is impressive, as a result of which this almost 50-years-old ship looks and works like new. Still, it was an unexpected pleasure to see the smiles on the faces of the Navy personnel when Vajpayee merely hinted that they might get a new aircraft carrier.