The GZ effect

I was in New York within days of 9/11 as a massive excavation was underway at Ground Zero GZ. As one walked along the kilometre-long Brook...

I was in New York within days of 9/11 as a massive excavation was underway at Ground Zero GZ. As one walked along the kilometre-long Brooklyn Heights promenade, lined by thousands of memory candles.

On an earlier visit, over a year ago, the experience had been starkly different. WTC had got etched in my memory because in its shopping Plaza I had run into the smartly-dressed sailors of the missile cruiser, I.N.S. Mysore, which stood at anchor in the Hudson River for the international review to mark USA8217;s Independence Day.

Do you know which was the most popular tourist spot in the US? GZ, of course. Out there, patriotic souls were buying printed T-shirts with the image of the twin towers imprinted on them, while the angry ones were opting for toilet paper rolls with pictures of Osama bin Laden.

We had learnt about nuclear, biological and chemical warfare as part of our training in the 1950s in H.M.S. Phoenix. It all came back to me when I read a news item in the New York Times that gas masks were stockpiled on Capitol Hill, prompted by new terrorist threats.

In New Delhi, too, when Indo-Pak forces were in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, there was talk of nuclear shelters for the safety of our rulers on Raisina Hill and for those who had the money to pay for one. North Block even ordered civil defence measures to be practiced in Lutyens Delhi to prepare for a possible nuclear exchange with Islamabad.

All this talk of a nuclear doctrine brings me to a story related at a time when the buzzword was 8216;standardisation8217; of defence equipment. Twenty years ago, I was the secretary of a committee headed by General Sunderjee, who had convened a meeting to discuss the acquisition of a crane.

In keeping with the mantra of standardisation, the Air Force representative stated with all the force at his command, 8216;8216;the crane must stand up to high winds and must not fail in sand storms8217;8217;. The Navy spelt out its requirements more modestly, stating that the device should withstand the corrosion caused by salt water spray. The Army, being the senior service, wanted the apparatus to function in high altitudes and in all-weather conditions.

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The meeting would have happily concluded at this point if a civilian 8216;boffin8217; from R038;D had not piped up to demand a design which would ensure protection to the crane operator in the event of a nuclear attack!

Prime Minister Vajpayee8217;s post-Pokharan II slogan, 8216;Jai Vigyan8217; comes to mind and you can imagine the astronomical cost of such a contraption! Mercifully, after coming to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, temperatures have cooled down on the sub-continent.

Travel advisories to foreign nationals have been lifted, prompting my Dartmouth Naval College term mate, Peter Honey, India-bound with wife Jane for our re-union jubilee celebrations, to write: 8216;8216;Perhaps we don8217;t need to bring our nuclear suits.8217;8217;

The writer was head of the military wing in the Cabinet Secretariat