Thar they blow!

The Indian Navy’s hosting of a five-nation joint exercise named Malabar, in the Bay of Bengal, has ruffled the Left Front.

The Indian Navy’s hosting of a five-nation joint exercise named Malabar, in the Bay of Bengal, has ruffled the Left Front. Mercifully, there was no clamour in the fifties and sixties when our navy routinely participated in the annual joint exercises (JET) for Commonwealth navies.

The assembly point for the exercises was Trincomalee in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon) from where the exercises were launched. Pakistan was also a member of the Commonwealth then.

In 1959, I was an officer-under-training with the rank of midshipman, commonly termed the lowest form of animal life, on board the destroyer ‘Ranjit’. Our ship arrived at Trincomalee and was secured to a buoy. A big natural harbour, Trinco had a long line of buoys and each destroyer-size ship fastened its head to a buoy with the stern free to swing with the tide and wind. The distance between two buoys was a little more than the length of the ships.

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All was well in normal circumstances when the ships swung in the same direction and with the same speed. There were times, however, when due to peculiar tidal conditions, the ships swung in different directions.

One afternoon, our officers were invited by a Pakistani ship which was next in line, for drinks and lunch. They all went over by boat, leaving the duty personnel, including me, behind. Soon after, our ship started pivoting fast in one direction and the Pakistani ship slowly in another, heading for a collision. All the duty personnel were summoned and both ships tried to reduce the force of the impact by throwing out fenders and physically bearing off the other ship by means of oars and wooden spars.

We did succeed in minimising the damage but not in preventing the ships coming together with our heads and sterns in different directions! A gangway was put across the ships for our officers who were happy to just walk back instead of having to take a boat. A tug soon arrived to pull the ships back in line and order was restored.

Back on board, the well-fed officers slept through from around 4 pm till the next morning. Vague mutterings were heard suggesting that their drinks had been spiked. Or was it only the great Pakistani hospitality?