I love some authors, though they are not the typical best-seller types. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow is my all-time favourite.
So is Winter Song written by, I believe a popular Mills & Boons writer, Karen Lockwood. These books were totally my own discoveries. Nobody recommended them. I didn’t even buy them. I discovered Winter Song ten years back in my ship, a bulk carrier which was on a long trans-oceanic voyage. I then proceeded to read it more than twenty times in the next six months. I loved the book so much that I filched it when I signed off from the ship. Fortunately nobody missed that book Winter Song.
Neither my wife nor my son, both of who are voracious readers, can understand my fixation on that book which continues till to-date.
It’s a simple love story set in the 1850s. Rich boy falls for a poor girl in a small town in the heart of USA.
Presumed Innocent on the other hand is a fast-paced book. Once again set in the USA, in a big bad American city. I am spellbound by the author’s command over the language as he describes a lurid courtroom story. A simple who-dunnit type murder rendered in a poetic manner. Scott Turow is the unparalleled master of mystery, twists and turns.
The best part about this book is that despite knowing the story after one or two readings I could re-read it many times over. I still read it now once in a while even after so many years.
I marvel at the meticulous manner Turow has built up the plot, leading the reader from one climax to the next till the final climax in the search for the murderer. The actual deed of murder is just an excuse in this story which details the grime of an American life-style, warts and all.
I can only wonder how the writer details the minutest nuance in a free-flow story, seemingly wandering away in tangents. Yet every line of the book is relevant to the central theme.
The lingo of a closed group of lawyers, criminals and cops has been effortlessly incorporated in this murder story. All the slangs and private terms they use in their everyday conversation make the story eminently believable.
How a fast society takes short-cuts with rules, laws and even integrity. Bending one’s normal lawful behavior to beat the nearest competitor. It is the story of a razor-sharp lady cutting through the maze of her life to grasp her goal.
How a law abiding citizen behaves in such an environment.
I love to read about these people. Vicariously enjoy leading their fast-paced lives. I imagine how I would behave if put in such situations.
In my heart I know that I am now used to the dull, monotonous, predictable life here in this small suburb of Mumbai. Nothing is going to surprise me. I will go to sleep latest by 10:30 for a sound seven hours uninterrupted sleep.
In fact I wouldn’t welcome any surprises – pleasant or unpleasant to disturb my dull, routine existence. I don’t think I am conditioned any more for excitement that upsets my routine.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Mark of Maturity
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” said Wilhelm Stekel.
J.D.Salinger, the legendary author of Catcher in The Rye, had quoted the psycho-analyst Stekel in his book.
The book is considered to be one of the all-time greats. What is so great about it? When I read it many years back the underlying meaning had escaped me. In fact I found the language a little unusual. Not one of those slick writings. When I read it again this time the book hit me like a swift strong punch. I was jolted as I grasped what the author wanted to convey.
It tells a story of a teenager, written in first person in the teenager’s language, who flunks his class and is expelled from the school. He moves around in a daze and seems to be heading towards self-destruction. A well-meaning teacher tries to save the boy but is unable to win his trust. Ultimately his kid sister saves him.
This book was published in 1945. It became famous because it touches a chord somewhere deep inside. Many of us have passed through this stage. As a young immature man many of us have wanted to die for a cause. At some point in our life we cross the fine line and become mature. Then we no longer want to die. We simply want to live for a cause. And live humbly.
It’s a pity Salinger never wrote another book in his life. For the next 50 years he became a recluse and shunned the world. When he died recently there was a renewed interest in his book.
I am curious to know how the other readers felt about the book. Did they also feel the same way as I did?
I liked the way the kid sister empathized with her brother. She never tells him how he should behave. When the brother decides to run away from home to go somewhere far away out into the west, the kid sister packs a bag to go away with him.
It’s brilliant. All of a sudden the guy realizes the futility of running away. He realizes he doesn’t want to endanger his little sister and for that matter his own life. He matures, so to say, and decides to live for something. And thus dig himself out of the hole of his own creation.
For the moment the story ends right there.
It will be interesting if someone writes the part II of this book - how the boy redeemed himself.
J.D.Salinger, the legendary author of Catcher in The Rye, had quoted the psycho-analyst Stekel in his book.
The book is considered to be one of the all-time greats. What is so great about it? When I read it many years back the underlying meaning had escaped me. In fact I found the language a little unusual. Not one of those slick writings. When I read it again this time the book hit me like a swift strong punch. I was jolted as I grasped what the author wanted to convey.
It tells a story of a teenager, written in first person in the teenager’s language, who flunks his class and is expelled from the school. He moves around in a daze and seems to be heading towards self-destruction. A well-meaning teacher tries to save the boy but is unable to win his trust. Ultimately his kid sister saves him.
This book was published in 1945. It became famous because it touches a chord somewhere deep inside. Many of us have passed through this stage. As a young immature man many of us have wanted to die for a cause. At some point in our life we cross the fine line and become mature. Then we no longer want to die. We simply want to live for a cause. And live humbly.
It’s a pity Salinger never wrote another book in his life. For the next 50 years he became a recluse and shunned the world. When he died recently there was a renewed interest in his book.
I am curious to know how the other readers felt about the book. Did they also feel the same way as I did?
I liked the way the kid sister empathized with her brother. She never tells him how he should behave. When the brother decides to run away from home to go somewhere far away out into the west, the kid sister packs a bag to go away with him.
It’s brilliant. All of a sudden the guy realizes the futility of running away. He realizes he doesn’t want to endanger his little sister and for that matter his own life. He matures, so to say, and decides to live for something. And thus dig himself out of the hole of his own creation.
For the moment the story ends right there.
It will be interesting if someone writes the part II of this book - how the boy redeemed himself.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Of Electronic Charts and All
In the morning there is the usual scramble for the newspaper. And generally I lose the battle.
‘You read it.’ I told my wife today. ‘Anyway I find the newspapers are more of a distraction than anything else.’
‘It’s got nothing about electronic charts or other subjects that interest me. The maximum that the newspaper has reached into my field is the GPS. Even that they write just once in a while. Moreover the newspapers never give you anything of importance. Just some drivel.’
For example, take this news snippet that appeared in the May edition of Inside GNSS, a magazine that I receive monthly:–
GAGAN DELAYED, AGAIN
India’s first GPS/SBAS payload, the GAGAN transmitter on the GSAT-4 geostationary satellite, disappeared into the Bay of Bengal on April 15 when its ill-fated launch vehicle veered off course. A key part of India’s GPS augmentation plan, the failure will further delay civil aviation modernization. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan promised another launch within a year.
The fact that our GPS aspirations are getting delayed over and over again doesn’t seem to excite the public. It was grandly announced many years back. Planned for launch in 2007, then 2008, 2009 and now plunged into the sea in 2010. But it’s yet to create a splash in our newspapers. At least I don’t remember reading anything about it in the news.
Of the one billion plus people in our country I would guess one billion remains blithely ignorant about this important happening.
Sad. Really sad.
Not so much that the satellite plunged into oblivion, but the fact that this event didn’t get mentioned in the news. Satellite launches malfunction. These things happen. And we will get over it. But who will wake up the sleeping mass? I guess that would take time.
Remember Y2K? The media had created so much panic on account of systems expected to malfunction at the dawn of the new millennium. That particular night of 31st December 1999 while the whole world was making merry and ushering the new millennium in I was on a ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened.
But something happened soon thereafter. In May 2000 the NASA switched off the SA (selective availability) error of the GPS. Suddenly making it into an accurate positioning system. The fact is that nobody (in India at least) realized it then that the world had changed.
I remember around that time the Director General Lighthouse and Lightships (DGLL) was executing a costly project of setting up DGPS reference stations all along the coast. In some class in the maritime college that I was attending, one of the instructors had sniggered and announced that with the SA error removed the whole project had become redundant. The unrefined GPS was now almost as accurate as the DGPS.
But I don’t think anyone of us in the class realized the true impact this act of USAF
would have on the world.
Switching off the SA spawned a whole lot of industries in the world market including in India. Like car navigation systems, container tracking, tracking of trucks plying all over the Indian roads. In fact, anything that required to be positioned accurately on a map. It even gave a thrust to the electronic chart industry of which I am a part of.
Meanwhile another revolution was concurrently happening. I am talking about the quantum developments in communication. Now we have GPS on the mobile too.
‘What’s your coordinates?’ is a common terminology understood by a layman on the street. Lay-people today are comfortable with such terms as Latitude and Longitude which was perhaps once upon a time understood only by geographers and navigators.
I love technology. If there is one hope that I have against the entrenched bureaucracy and corruption it is that the relentless march of technology would overwhelm it soon. There will be no secrets left in the closet.
The man in the market place will know it all.
‘You read it.’ I told my wife today. ‘Anyway I find the newspapers are more of a distraction than anything else.’
‘It’s got nothing about electronic charts or other subjects that interest me. The maximum that the newspaper has reached into my field is the GPS. Even that they write just once in a while. Moreover the newspapers never give you anything of importance. Just some drivel.’
For example, take this news snippet that appeared in the May edition of Inside GNSS, a magazine that I receive monthly:–
GAGAN DELAYED, AGAIN
India’s first GPS/SBAS payload, the GAGAN transmitter on the GSAT-4 geostationary satellite, disappeared into the Bay of Bengal on April 15 when its ill-fated launch vehicle veered off course. A key part of India’s GPS augmentation plan, the failure will further delay civil aviation modernization. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan promised another launch within a year.
The fact that our GPS aspirations are getting delayed over and over again doesn’t seem to excite the public. It was grandly announced many years back. Planned for launch in 2007, then 2008, 2009 and now plunged into the sea in 2010. But it’s yet to create a splash in our newspapers. At least I don’t remember reading anything about it in the news.
Of the one billion plus people in our country I would guess one billion remains blithely ignorant about this important happening.
Sad. Really sad.
Not so much that the satellite plunged into oblivion, but the fact that this event didn’t get mentioned in the news. Satellite launches malfunction. These things happen. And we will get over it. But who will wake up the sleeping mass? I guess that would take time.
Remember Y2K? The media had created so much panic on account of systems expected to malfunction at the dawn of the new millennium. That particular night of 31st December 1999 while the whole world was making merry and ushering the new millennium in I was on a ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened.
But something happened soon thereafter. In May 2000 the NASA switched off the SA (selective availability) error of the GPS. Suddenly making it into an accurate positioning system. The fact is that nobody (in India at least) realized it then that the world had changed.
I remember around that time the Director General Lighthouse and Lightships (DGLL) was executing a costly project of setting up DGPS reference stations all along the coast. In some class in the maritime college that I was attending, one of the instructors had sniggered and announced that with the SA error removed the whole project had become redundant. The unrefined GPS was now almost as accurate as the DGPS.
But I don’t think anyone of us in the class realized the true impact this act of USAF
would have on the world.
Switching off the SA spawned a whole lot of industries in the world market including in India. Like car navigation systems, container tracking, tracking of trucks plying all over the Indian roads. In fact, anything that required to be positioned accurately on a map. It even gave a thrust to the electronic chart industry of which I am a part of.
Meanwhile another revolution was concurrently happening. I am talking about the quantum developments in communication. Now we have GPS on the mobile too.
‘What’s your coordinates?’ is a common terminology understood by a layman on the street. Lay-people today are comfortable with such terms as Latitude and Longitude which was perhaps once upon a time understood only by geographers and navigators.
I love technology. If there is one hope that I have against the entrenched bureaucracy and corruption it is that the relentless march of technology would overwhelm it soon. There will be no secrets left in the closet.
The man in the market place will know it all.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Developing Inland Waters of India
The government had an important announcement to make.
“There’s a business opportunity coming up. We want private companies to avail this opportunity. There is a big demand for power in Arunachal Pradesh. In fact in the whole of North East and East. We have already identified locations for setting up thermal power plants. These points are all accessible by rivers. The inland waterways department will make available national waterways to you.
Come along. Get your vessels. The barges will go on a merry go round. Pick up cargo from the dry bulk carriers waiting at the deeps at Sandheads in the Bay of Bengal. Carry the coal up the river to the power plants. Maybe you will get a return cargo of fly-ash. It’s a win-win situation for all.
We produce the power and sell to the consumers. The transporters make money. The people get precious power. The country develops as a whole.”
Wow! What a great plan.
An erstwhile secretary of shipping was given the mike. He had a bold announcement to make.
“Privatize the rivers! If JNPT Bombay can have a private container port why can’t we have private stretches of rivers.”
He looked around at the august gathering to see the effect of his words. Some government officials shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
Next the DG Shipping read out from the prepared notes. But after the above announcement it was difficult to get the attention of the audience. The wind had been taken out of the sails.
Then the experts got their chance to strut their stuff. Professional companies from India and abroad unveiled their customized solutions.
“We have 10 years experience in this business.
We have already set up such a system in Goa.
We have experience in Canada.
We already have a passenger service in national waterway # 1.
Transshipment is the magic word. We can deliver.”
…..and so on.
Till the mike came to a thickset gentleman from NTPC. The owner of the power plants. He is the guy who needs the coal.
“Imported coal is our last option. As a matter of fact it is a stop-gap solution. Our main suppliers are Coal India from the local mines at Dhanbad. Our first priority is supply from the government. I don’t see a long term future in coal coming up the rivers by barges.”
There was a stunned silence in the hall. On one hand the government was exhorting the private players to invest substantially in new barges, in new technology and help in carting the coal up the rivers. On the other hand they were not giving any assurance of cargo.
The mike came to Coal India. The guy was wishy-washy.
“The figures they are asking for is mind-boggling. Maybe we can supply but not right now. Perhaps later.”
Some more skeletons came out of the cupboard. Turns out that the rivers are not sufficiently surveyed. There are no night navigation systems and the charts are inadequate.
The government went into salvage mode.
“Gentlemen, good quality imported coal is the need of the hour. Domestic coal do not meet the standard. Historically there has always been a continuous increase in the demand for power. Unlike nuclear or hydro-electric the thermal plants have a gestation period of 36 to 48 months. Coal has to be transported. Road and rail network is clearly inadequate in the North East. So the only lines of supply we see are the crisscrossing rivers. Even if waterway # 1 is saturated after 8 to 10 years there is # 2. Let me assure you again, there is an opportunity here. “
The private sector was watching quietly. A few questions came up.
“Give us a clear picture. We don’t want any ambiguity.”
After all it was not a child’s game. You don’t invest in substantial tonnage unless there was a reasonable chance to make profits. Looking at the agencies in the panel – NTPC, Coal India, Kolkata Port Trust didn’t exactly set your adrenalins on fire. There were huge vested interests. Sorry. They needed to convince the private sector harder.
It was time for lunch. I had seen enough for the day.
I left my card in the forum.
“Sir, if I can provide any support please let me know.”
I doubt I will get a call. They were big men in the government. They don’t call. They only received calls.
Where was the hurry? It can wait. There is another year or two before I go on a transfer. Maybe to the textile ministry. New industry new issues.
I am guessing. Six months from now the project will be quietly shelved. Two years from now we will have another big seminar. To promote Public-Private-Partnership in the interiors of East and North-East, or some other under-developed region. Which lie under the hard-hold of the entrenched bureaucracy. .
Till then Au Revoir!
Post Script – The above seminar happened six months back. For several years I have been watching the Indian government announce grand plans to develop the inland waters of India. Nothing concrete has happened so far. No wonder the retired bureaucrat had burst out in frustration ‘privatize the rivers’.
“There’s a business opportunity coming up. We want private companies to avail this opportunity. There is a big demand for power in Arunachal Pradesh. In fact in the whole of North East and East. We have already identified locations for setting up thermal power plants. These points are all accessible by rivers. The inland waterways department will make available national waterways to you.
Come along. Get your vessels. The barges will go on a merry go round. Pick up cargo from the dry bulk carriers waiting at the deeps at Sandheads in the Bay of Bengal. Carry the coal up the river to the power plants. Maybe you will get a return cargo of fly-ash. It’s a win-win situation for all.
We produce the power and sell to the consumers. The transporters make money. The people get precious power. The country develops as a whole.”
Wow! What a great plan.
An erstwhile secretary of shipping was given the mike. He had a bold announcement to make.
“Privatize the rivers! If JNPT Bombay can have a private container port why can’t we have private stretches of rivers.”
He looked around at the august gathering to see the effect of his words. Some government officials shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
Next the DG Shipping read out from the prepared notes. But after the above announcement it was difficult to get the attention of the audience. The wind had been taken out of the sails.
Then the experts got their chance to strut their stuff. Professional companies from India and abroad unveiled their customized solutions.
“We have 10 years experience in this business.
We have already set up such a system in Goa.
We have experience in Canada.
We already have a passenger service in national waterway # 1.
Transshipment is the magic word. We can deliver.”
…..and so on.
Till the mike came to a thickset gentleman from NTPC. The owner of the power plants. He is the guy who needs the coal.
“Imported coal is our last option. As a matter of fact it is a stop-gap solution. Our main suppliers are Coal India from the local mines at Dhanbad. Our first priority is supply from the government. I don’t see a long term future in coal coming up the rivers by barges.”
There was a stunned silence in the hall. On one hand the government was exhorting the private players to invest substantially in new barges, in new technology and help in carting the coal up the rivers. On the other hand they were not giving any assurance of cargo.
The mike came to Coal India. The guy was wishy-washy.
“The figures they are asking for is mind-boggling. Maybe we can supply but not right now. Perhaps later.”
Some more skeletons came out of the cupboard. Turns out that the rivers are not sufficiently surveyed. There are no night navigation systems and the charts are inadequate.
The government went into salvage mode.
“Gentlemen, good quality imported coal is the need of the hour. Domestic coal do not meet the standard. Historically there has always been a continuous increase in the demand for power. Unlike nuclear or hydro-electric the thermal plants have a gestation period of 36 to 48 months. Coal has to be transported. Road and rail network is clearly inadequate in the North East. So the only lines of supply we see are the crisscrossing rivers. Even if waterway # 1 is saturated after 8 to 10 years there is # 2. Let me assure you again, there is an opportunity here. “
The private sector was watching quietly. A few questions came up.
“Give us a clear picture. We don’t want any ambiguity.”
After all it was not a child’s game. You don’t invest in substantial tonnage unless there was a reasonable chance to make profits. Looking at the agencies in the panel – NTPC, Coal India, Kolkata Port Trust didn’t exactly set your adrenalins on fire. There were huge vested interests. Sorry. They needed to convince the private sector harder.
It was time for lunch. I had seen enough for the day.
I left my card in the forum.
“Sir, if I can provide any support please let me know.”
I doubt I will get a call. They were big men in the government. They don’t call. They only received calls.
Where was the hurry? It can wait. There is another year or two before I go on a transfer. Maybe to the textile ministry. New industry new issues.
I am guessing. Six months from now the project will be quietly shelved. Two years from now we will have another big seminar. To promote Public-Private-Partnership in the interiors of East and North-East, or some other under-developed region. Which lie under the hard-hold of the entrenched bureaucracy. .
Till then Au Revoir!
Post Script – The above seminar happened six months back. For several years I have been watching the Indian government announce grand plans to develop the inland waters of India. Nothing concrete has happened so far. No wonder the retired bureaucrat had burst out in frustration ‘privatize the rivers’.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Angst of an Indian Seafarer - by P. Rishi
Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola once said:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop any one of these, they will be irrevocably damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. "
Once upon a time riding off on a horse to conquer new lands or collecting pots of gold made you famous. Perhaps you'd even get a name in history if you were politically savvy.
Going away on a long voyage was a thing of courage that only the select few undertook! You were greeted off with really really warm hugs and kisses and good wishes from every one!
Today things are very different.
SUDDENLY THOSE HUGS AND KISSES ARE NOT SO WARM AS BEFORE!!
You are not at fault.
You are just the mouse whose cheese has moved!
Remember spending the evenings sitting by the fireside, sipping a glass of scotch and your friends hanging on to each word that you uttered while they drank your whiskey?
Today, who cares if you've been all over the world! They get the same thing in a syndicated fashion on the TV.
Does anybody care for you? Or for that matter do you care for them?
WHO CARES?
And that is fine. Unfortunately that is where the problem starts. What used to be "Success" in others’ eyes and "Satisfaction" to you earlier, now do not mean either.
Things have changed.
Information Technology has opened up our societies as never before. Some changes are good but some are surely not!
There is email to keep in touch with family. Telephone to talk to your friends, but the same instrument rings whenever Boss decides to have a chat.
The net helps us to maintain relationships with friends and families. Some of us find relief in taking a break from the daily work to browse. Looking for humor or satisfying a hobby. Thus stop deterioration of our mental health. On the other hand we could simply become an addict.
Just one decade back we felt exhilarated when Sparks could tune the HF so that we could make that important call from sea. Modern communication has shrunk the world into one single global village.
Suddenly there is no demand for mariners like us who could bring back tall tales of the sea and our exploits in distant shores.
You were a provider for your family. You were very caring and loving not just to your own family, but also to your extended family. To your friends you were the "greatest guy on earth". You provided for a home, and filled up that home with the comforts of amenities that kept your loved ones comfortable.
But something happened while you were away.
Each member of the family got their "Own Space" they wanted.
You Provided. But they forgot you.
Globalization hit you smack in the face. You tried hard not to slip off the edge as the world got flatter and flatter!
Economies have improved and there are lots of opportunities other than the sea. That's where the rub is for a middle-aged seafarer. Who is looking for a job ashore in another vertical specialization that will give him a comparable salary. Unfortunately the "past experience", certification and credibility in that new industry do not matter. With diminished opportunities some mariners choose to stay back at sea.
How does a seafarer address the problem of work-life balance that Brian Dyson advised? For a seafarer it's more like work on Mars (sea) and life on Venus (ashore)! How can they balance the two?
What a joke! Please take away ALL work from me and let me take my Sailboat to the Caribbean and just leave me alone! I'll take the life, you take the work! Please don't ask me to balance work and life! Where the boundaries of work and life do not meet how can one define which is work and which is life!
They talk of Compensation. There is an easy fix to many problems - throw money. Then there are some problems which no amount of money will solve.
Excerpts from an email posted in the Merchant Navy group. It reminded me of the times I used to sail. It is difficult to compare the life-style of a shippie with those who are ashore.
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop any one of these, they will be irrevocably damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. "
Once upon a time riding off on a horse to conquer new lands or collecting pots of gold made you famous. Perhaps you'd even get a name in history if you were politically savvy.
Going away on a long voyage was a thing of courage that only the select few undertook! You were greeted off with really really warm hugs and kisses and good wishes from every one!
Today things are very different.
SUDDENLY THOSE HUGS AND KISSES ARE NOT SO WARM AS BEFORE!!
You are not at fault.
You are just the mouse whose cheese has moved!
Remember spending the evenings sitting by the fireside, sipping a glass of scotch and your friends hanging on to each word that you uttered while they drank your whiskey?
Today, who cares if you've been all over the world! They get the same thing in a syndicated fashion on the TV.
Does anybody care for you? Or for that matter do you care for them?
WHO CARES?
And that is fine. Unfortunately that is where the problem starts. What used to be "Success" in others’ eyes and "Satisfaction" to you earlier, now do not mean either.
Things have changed.
Information Technology has opened up our societies as never before. Some changes are good but some are surely not!
There is email to keep in touch with family. Telephone to talk to your friends, but the same instrument rings whenever Boss decides to have a chat.
The net helps us to maintain relationships with friends and families. Some of us find relief in taking a break from the daily work to browse. Looking for humor or satisfying a hobby. Thus stop deterioration of our mental health. On the other hand we could simply become an addict.
Just one decade back we felt exhilarated when Sparks could tune the HF so that we could make that important call from sea. Modern communication has shrunk the world into one single global village.
Suddenly there is no demand for mariners like us who could bring back tall tales of the sea and our exploits in distant shores.
You were a provider for your family. You were very caring and loving not just to your own family, but also to your extended family. To your friends you were the "greatest guy on earth". You provided for a home, and filled up that home with the comforts of amenities that kept your loved ones comfortable.
But something happened while you were away.
Each member of the family got their "Own Space" they wanted.
You Provided. But they forgot you.
Globalization hit you smack in the face. You tried hard not to slip off the edge as the world got flatter and flatter!
Economies have improved and there are lots of opportunities other than the sea. That's where the rub is for a middle-aged seafarer. Who is looking for a job ashore in another vertical specialization that will give him a comparable salary. Unfortunately the "past experience", certification and credibility in that new industry do not matter. With diminished opportunities some mariners choose to stay back at sea.
How does a seafarer address the problem of work-life balance that Brian Dyson advised? For a seafarer it's more like work on Mars (sea) and life on Venus (ashore)! How can they balance the two?
What a joke! Please take away ALL work from me and let me take my Sailboat to the Caribbean and just leave me alone! I'll take the life, you take the work! Please don't ask me to balance work and life! Where the boundaries of work and life do not meet how can one define which is work and which is life!
They talk of Compensation. There is an easy fix to many problems - throw money. Then there are some problems which no amount of money will solve.
Excerpts from an email posted in the Merchant Navy group. It reminded me of the times I used to sail. It is difficult to compare the life-style of a shippie with those who are ashore.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Navigation Made Easy
“I envied the navigators on big ships who work out the time on the Local Apparent Noon beforehand, at the proper time pick up their sextant and go out on the bridge-wing and shoot. Then back to the chartroom and in a minute have their latitude. Sometimes I wondered which was harder about my noon sights – the actual taking of the sight on the tossing deck or keeping my balance. Any slip on deck, especially with seas coming over, could mean a broken sextant. A few times I had taken a fall on my elbow and once I thought I had broken the instrument. It frightened me a little and I pasted a warning on the box
Thus wrote William Willis fifty years back describing his epic voyage all alone across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Willis hadn’t seen modern navigators with accurate GPS position being plotted real-time on electronic charts. The guy would had probably gone into a shock.
The old school of navigation is a dying art. When I started my career in 1979 the sextant was the most important tool in a ship. How many of the current crop of mariners have heard of sounding sextants. It is built specifically to measure horizontal angles. Two such angles taken simultaneously would give an accurate fix plotted with a station pointer.
Those days coastal navigation was an interesting subject. Taking over a watch meant we had to study the chart carefully, pick up the binoculars, go out on the bridge wing and for the next 10 to 15 minutes identify all the important coastal features. We learnt practical geography in a way which no classroom could match. The colour of the sea, the smell in the air all those things had some clues for us. Today, with GPS, the charm of navigation is no more there.
Hyperbolic position fixing systems were developed just after WWII. Decca was the one most commonly used by the navigators.
They laid various chains all over the world but mostly in Europe and Australasia. In India we had the Calcutta chain in the east and the Salaya chain in Gujarat. When the coast dipped out of visual sight the radio receivers helped us to fix our positions till about 300 kms from the stations.
The chains ceased to operate in March 2000 finally bowing out to satellite navigation. Terms such as hyperbolic fixes, lane slips and decca charts disappeared from our vocabulary.
In the early eighties the transit navy navigation satellite system (NNSS) appeared on the scene. We were witnessing a revolution in the making. Satellite navigation would shortly eclipse all other types of navigation.
The NNSS however, was not a threat to terrestrial navigation. We got one Sat fix during a four-hours watch. Acquiring the satellites was a long drawn out process. And it wasn’t always that one could get an acceptable fix. An accuracy of 1 mile was considered to be good. Apart from ocean navigation it was not of much use. Transit NNSS was retired in 1996.
By the nineties the GPS had become an integral part of our bridge. With the deliberately induced Selective Availability (SA) we got a fix accuracy of ± 100 metres. The best part about GPS was that it gave us continuous fixes. With GPS position systems Electronic Charts became a meaningful system.
The midnight of 31st December 1999 was a defining moment as far as celestial navigation was concerned. The techies had somehow managed to create the Y2K scare. As the roll-over to the new millennium approached closer the mariners showed an earnest interest in astro-navigation. I remember we were instructed by our superintendents to practice star sights as ‘GPS might not be available wef 01st Jan 2000.’
That particular night whilst the whole world was merry-making and ushering in the new millennium, I was on the ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened. It was the last time deck officers would seriously consider celestial navigation.
When the SA was discontinued in May 2000 the GPS dramatically improved its accuracy to ± 15 metres. Those who wanted still better accuracy could always install a Differential GPS receiver (± 5 mtrs).
In the quest to continuously improve the accuracy the agencies have come out with the Satellite Based Augmented Systems (SBAS).
Some of the SBAS are the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) operational since 2003 in US, European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) which was commissioned a few months back and the MSAS in Japan. India (GAGAN) and China (Beidou) also have plans to provide such systems for both aircraft and marine navigation.
The WAAS has an accuracy of ± 1.5 meters depending on your geographic location.
In SBAS there is no need to carry a separate receiver to receive the satellite corrections. The same GPS receiver is good enough to get the corrections. No additional cost involved here. The other thing is that DGPS works quite close (150 miles) to the land-based reference station. Unlike in SBAS the coverage in DGPS is very limited.
Good news for mariners is that all these SBAS systems – WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS are compatible. One receiver is good enough. In the recent future I expect most ships to have augmented GPSs. With the cost of a receiver less than 50 dollars shipowners can place a number of augmented GPS receivers at strategic points of a big ship. All points of a vessel will be accurately traced in a tight maneuver. It would be very useful when entering docks or navigating in narrow rivers.
BUST YOUR BONE BUT SAVE THE SEXTANT.
Thus wrote William Willis fifty years back describing his epic voyage all alone across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Willis hadn’t seen modern navigators with accurate GPS position being plotted real-time on electronic charts. The guy would had probably gone into a shock.
The old school of navigation is a dying art. When I started my career in 1979 the sextant was the most important tool in a ship. How many of the current crop of mariners have heard of sounding sextants. It is built specifically to measure horizontal angles. Two such angles taken simultaneously would give an accurate fix plotted with a station pointer.
Those days coastal navigation was an interesting subject. Taking over a watch meant we had to study the chart carefully, pick up the binoculars, go out on the bridge wing and for the next 10 to 15 minutes identify all the important coastal features. We learnt practical geography in a way which no classroom could match. The colour of the sea, the smell in the air all those things had some clues for us. Today, with GPS, the charm of navigation is no more there.
Hyperbolic position fixing systems were developed just after WWII. Decca was the one most commonly used by the navigators.
They laid various chains all over the world but mostly in Europe and Australasia. In India we had the Calcutta chain in the east and the Salaya chain in Gujarat. When the coast dipped out of visual sight the radio receivers helped us to fix our positions till about 300 kms from the stations.
The chains ceased to operate in March 2000 finally bowing out to satellite navigation. Terms such as hyperbolic fixes, lane slips and decca charts disappeared from our vocabulary.
In the early eighties the transit navy navigation satellite system (NNSS) appeared on the scene. We were witnessing a revolution in the making. Satellite navigation would shortly eclipse all other types of navigation.
The NNSS however, was not a threat to terrestrial navigation. We got one Sat fix during a four-hours watch. Acquiring the satellites was a long drawn out process. And it wasn’t always that one could get an acceptable fix. An accuracy of 1 mile was considered to be good. Apart from ocean navigation it was not of much use. Transit NNSS was retired in 1996.
By the nineties the GPS had become an integral part of our bridge. With the deliberately induced Selective Availability (SA) we got a fix accuracy of ± 100 metres. The best part about GPS was that it gave us continuous fixes. With GPS position systems Electronic Charts became a meaningful system.
The midnight of 31st December 1999 was a defining moment as far as celestial navigation was concerned. The techies had somehow managed to create the Y2K scare. As the roll-over to the new millennium approached closer the mariners showed an earnest interest in astro-navigation. I remember we were instructed by our superintendents to practice star sights as ‘GPS might not be available wef 01st Jan 2000.’
That particular night whilst the whole world was merry-making and ushering in the new millennium, I was on the ship hunched over the GPS and other equipment keenly awaiting the chaos predicted to descend on the earth. In the event nothing happened. It was the last time deck officers would seriously consider celestial navigation.
When the SA was discontinued in May 2000 the GPS dramatically improved its accuracy to ± 15 metres. Those who wanted still better accuracy could always install a Differential GPS receiver (± 5 mtrs).
In the quest to continuously improve the accuracy the agencies have come out with the Satellite Based Augmented Systems (SBAS).
Some of the SBAS are the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) operational since 2003 in US, European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) which was commissioned a few months back and the MSAS in Japan. India (GAGAN) and China (Beidou) also have plans to provide such systems for both aircraft and marine navigation.
The WAAS has an accuracy of ± 1.5 meters depending on your geographic location.
In SBAS there is no need to carry a separate receiver to receive the satellite corrections. The same GPS receiver is good enough to get the corrections. No additional cost involved here. The other thing is that DGPS works quite close (150 miles) to the land-based reference station. Unlike in SBAS the coverage in DGPS is very limited.
Good news for mariners is that all these SBAS systems – WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS are compatible. One receiver is good enough. In the recent future I expect most ships to have augmented GPSs. With the cost of a receiver less than 50 dollars shipowners can place a number of augmented GPS receivers at strategic points of a big ship. All points of a vessel will be accurately traced in a tight maneuver. It would be very useful when entering docks or navigating in narrow rivers.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Scripting a New India
“Capt. Raj?”
“Speaking.”
“Hi, this is Capt Jagan here. How are you?”
“Oh Hi.” I had spoken to Jagan a couple of times before. He used to be the master of a VLCC when his ECDIS had a problem. Later he joined Essar office.
“I didn’t know you are a charged hydrographic surveyor,” he said with a laugh,
“How do you charge a surveyor by the way? Do you put a 220V through him?”
I laughed.
“We need your signature to authenticate a hydrographic survey that we have carried out.”
“For what?” I asked, “Are you submitting the survey to the HO?”
“No no. This is a requirement of the state maritime board.”
A week later one fine morning, all of a sudden I got a call from Jagan,
“Sorry for the short notice. Can you come to Hazira today?”
"How long does it take by taxi?” I asked.
“Five hours.”
Provided you had a top-end car and there was no traffic, which he forgot to tell me. It took me nine hours to muster a good car, grab an overnighter bag and reach the Essar office at Hazira. On the highway I found lots of construction going on. The Surat to Mumbai highway was going to become world-class.
”Kab tak ho jayega?” I asked the driver. Before the next monsoon he told me. Meanwhile my left hand was clutched on the handle bar and my right on my heart, as the fast car zoomed through the traffic. It was swerving in and out overtaking all kinds of trucks forming an endless line to Gujarat.
So there I was. Back in Essar. I had sailed in Essar ships ten years back. I felt I was back amongst familiar surroundings and known people.
Rao is the boss of that unit. An old timer who has been through the ups and downs of the company, many downs till this dizzying ‘up’ happened. He inherited the chair from a retired admiral who didn’t wait for the good times to come. Rao has a band of hard working people under him.
I knew Manoj from the Navy. Both of us were from the hydrographic branch. Jagan Lal is a workhorse. He has carried the hectic life of a ship during loading/discharging to this shore post. Somebody should tell him to relax. Unlike a ship which has a fixed tenure that ends after a few months, here on-shore life goes on and on and on… I was meeting these guys at a port terminal being built by Essar.
Hazira is, or till recently was, a god-forsaken place. Essar has an iron ore plant here where they make hot-bricketed iron (HBI). It has a market in the far-east – Japan, Korea and now increasingly to China. A new port is coming up here. Lot of infrastructure is being built. A new face of India is being scripted here.
On the other side of the road Essar has built a township. On land that had being reclaimed from the sea. I am not sure if ‘reclaimed’ is the right word. Because as Leslie Forbes wrote in ‘Bombay Ice’
“How do you reclaim something that was never yours in the first place?”
Nevertheless, from the swampy wastelands Essar has created Nand Niketan, a paradise of a place. There is greenery all around. The place is well planned and well managed. It has all amenities available such as play-grounds, swimming pool, schools, and shopping centers including a mall. So much so, that the 7000 fortunate residents hardly feel the need to go to the big city 18 kilometers away.
In the Essar office Jagan appeared a little pressurized. “What are your charges?”
I said “Look, I don’t know what the job is. Anyway, what is the hurry?”
Jagan got a little more pressurized.
“You have to simply put your signature and authenticate the survey.”
“For whose benefit?”
“For the benefit of the maritime board. They want a charge surveyor to authenticate the survey.”
Jagan mentioned a figure. I nodded my assent to his great relief.
The hydrographic surveyor from the maritime board came in. He was a chilled out fellow. It turned out we had served on the same ships. We knew many of the old timers from the branch. We got along well.
“Kabhi aaiye GMB mein. Main aapko wahan set kara doonga.”
I gave him my charming smile.
I was impressed by the developments Essar and its employees had wrought upon Gujarat. They are pumping funds in Jamnagar and Hazira. Transforming the non-descript places on the map into modern cities.
If somebody wants to see how infra-structure should be developed out of nothing they should visit these places.
Postscript – Some names have been changed to protect the identities.
“Speaking.”
“Hi, this is Capt Jagan here. How are you?”
“Oh Hi.” I had spoken to Jagan a couple of times before. He used to be the master of a VLCC when his ECDIS had a problem. Later he joined Essar office.
“I didn’t know you are a charged hydrographic surveyor,” he said with a laugh,
“How do you charge a surveyor by the way? Do you put a 220V through him?”
I laughed.
“We need your signature to authenticate a hydrographic survey that we have carried out.”
“For what?” I asked, “Are you submitting the survey to the HO?”
“No no. This is a requirement of the state maritime board.”
A week later one fine morning, all of a sudden I got a call from Jagan,
“Sorry for the short notice. Can you come to Hazira today?”
"How long does it take by taxi?” I asked.
“Five hours.”
Provided you had a top-end car and there was no traffic, which he forgot to tell me. It took me nine hours to muster a good car, grab an overnighter bag and reach the Essar office at Hazira. On the highway I found lots of construction going on. The Surat to Mumbai highway was going to become world-class.
”Kab tak ho jayega?” I asked the driver. Before the next monsoon he told me. Meanwhile my left hand was clutched on the handle bar and my right on my heart, as the fast car zoomed through the traffic. It was swerving in and out overtaking all kinds of trucks forming an endless line to Gujarat.
So there I was. Back in Essar. I had sailed in Essar ships ten years back. I felt I was back amongst familiar surroundings and known people.
Rao is the boss of that unit. An old timer who has been through the ups and downs of the company, many downs till this dizzying ‘up’ happened. He inherited the chair from a retired admiral who didn’t wait for the good times to come. Rao has a band of hard working people under him.
I knew Manoj from the Navy. Both of us were from the hydrographic branch. Jagan Lal is a workhorse. He has carried the hectic life of a ship during loading/discharging to this shore post. Somebody should tell him to relax. Unlike a ship which has a fixed tenure that ends after a few months, here on-shore life goes on and on and on… I was meeting these guys at a port terminal being built by Essar.
Hazira is, or till recently was, a god-forsaken place. Essar has an iron ore plant here where they make hot-bricketed iron (HBI). It has a market in the far-east – Japan, Korea and now increasingly to China. A new port is coming up here. Lot of infrastructure is being built. A new face of India is being scripted here.
On the other side of the road Essar has built a township. On land that had being reclaimed from the sea. I am not sure if ‘reclaimed’ is the right word. Because as Leslie Forbes wrote in ‘Bombay Ice’
“How do you reclaim something that was never yours in the first place?”
Nevertheless, from the swampy wastelands Essar has created Nand Niketan, a paradise of a place. There is greenery all around. The place is well planned and well managed. It has all amenities available such as play-grounds, swimming pool, schools, and shopping centers including a mall. So much so, that the 7000 fortunate residents hardly feel the need to go to the big city 18 kilometers away.
In the Essar office Jagan appeared a little pressurized. “What are your charges?”
I said “Look, I don’t know what the job is. Anyway, what is the hurry?”
Jagan got a little more pressurized.
“You have to simply put your signature and authenticate the survey.”
“For whose benefit?”
“For the benefit of the maritime board. They want a charge surveyor to authenticate the survey.”
Jagan mentioned a figure. I nodded my assent to his great relief.
The hydrographic surveyor from the maritime board came in. He was a chilled out fellow. It turned out we had served on the same ships. We knew many of the old timers from the branch. We got along well.
“Kabhi aaiye GMB mein. Main aapko wahan set kara doonga.”
I gave him my charming smile.
I was impressed by the developments Essar and its employees had wrought upon Gujarat. They are pumping funds in Jamnagar and Hazira. Transforming the non-descript places on the map into modern cities.
If somebody wants to see how infra-structure should be developed out of nothing they should visit these places.
Postscript – Some names have been changed to protect the identities.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Feedbacks
‘When do you sleep?’ I asked.
“Isn’t that boring?”
At midnight my ex Navy friend, now well settled in Singapore, was taking us around in his spacious SUV. I was having trouble trying to keep my eyes open. According to that fellow Singaporeans found ‘sleeping’ a boring activity. The families sitting behind laughed.
On the roads there was quite a bit of traffic. Some pedestrians on the sidewalks. The scene outside resembled a normal evening in any of the cities around the world. But this was past midnight.
Whereas OEMs are enthusiastic about embracing every new technology that comes their way, ship-operators are more circumspect. Their attitudes towards new gizmos was summed up as:
"Keep looking out of the window because, When technology becomes your Master you can navigate faster to disaster.”
One shipping superintendent gave a realistic picture of how his company was dealing with ECDIS, digital charts, AIS, GMDSS and other peripheral developments that have invaded the bridge in the recent years.
The people who run the ship – Master, Chief, Second are not very highly educated. Most of them do not have a college degree. After school they do a few months of specialized training from an institute before joining the ship as a cadet. The real training begins then.
Without any formal degree deck officers are expected to grapple with the sophisticated equipment arraigned on the bridge. A guy is considered knowledgeable if he can master the operating manual of a fitted equipment. Most times the fellow memorizes the one page instruction sheet that is attached as a quick reference guide to the instrument. But then he is a practical fellow. Faced with operating a huge vessel in a real world where a moment’s lapse could result in a spectacular incident the OOW finds out all that is useful about the equipment from the point of view of running a ship.
My instinct says that OEMs who have developed a system in response to the industry feedback stand a better chance against those that have been developed by highly technical engineers and scientists ensconced in their cubicles but cut off from the real world.
C-Map digital charts was created purely from the point of view of the navigator. It was modeled according to the market response. It has succeeded despite there being no regulations forcing its usage. On the other hand the ENC is an IMO/IHO creation. Howsoever well-meaning they are but they have not catered for the user feedback. There are hardly any users to start with so where is the useful feedback?
S-57, S-63, ENC, SENC, RENC, WEND are all alien words to the bridge OOWs. Even today, at least in India, books on the subject haven’t yet penetrated to competency students. As such, students retain at most 10% of what is taught in the classroom. Rest of the knowledge comes from the field through practical usage. The majority of ships out there do not have ECDIS. The percentage of ships fitted with ECDIS hardware could be 10% or 5% or even less.
When the bridge OOW sees an ECDIS he doesn’t realize that as per the definition it would not qualify as a proper ECDIS. Maybe as an ECS, but not as an approved ECDIS. Truthfully speaking even a properly approved ECDIS might become an ECS without the knowledge of the user if the ENCs that he uses are not up-to-date. There would be no alarm because there is no specific definition for an up-to-date chart. Up-to-date as of when? A month, a fortnight, a week or a day? Even the hydrographic offices have not reached a consensus amongst themselves how often to issue corrections.
Back on the bridge the OOW doesn’t know (as yet) that he doesn’t have ENCs on board. Maybe raster charts or some other vector charts. So they learn to use ARCS, C-Map or Transas charts. Unfortunately for him the rules are ambiguous. SOLAS has a definition for the vector ENCs but is not clear about non-ENCs. In the absence of specific information some of them feel C-Map is ENCs.
“Isn’t it vector?”
Sealing the argument by implying that raster is non-standard and vector is better. And acceptable.
When some owners buy ENCs to go along with C-Map the OOWs realize that in certain parts of the world C-Map is far better than the ENCs.
Mariners talk amongst themselves. C-Map comes out tops mainly because it was there not because it was mandated but because it was useful. ENCs are considered heavy, complicated, time-consuming, difficult to select from chart catalogs and expensive. After all that unraveling of instructions and breaking your head the official charts turn out to be a damp squib.
The next few years are going to be interesting. Let’s see whether the seafarers who come under the SOLAS regime will get their choice of charts on the bridge.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Trip to Singapore
It was a rare event for the family. One that happens probably once in five years or something. We realized it. We took in the sights knowing that those cherished images weren’t going to disappear from our memories soon.
A lot of planning went into the trip. A friend of a friend living in Singapore was traced. Isn’t his wife a homely person? How old was the daughter? The age of the daughter of the friend of a friend was a careful bit of information catered for in our meticulous plan.
So there we were at Changi airport. Two sheets of paper containing our itinerary was clutched tightly in my fist. They were already showing signs of wear and tear. Our trip was yet to begun.
‘What is the next step?’ Swipe some Singapore dollars. SGD 500 to be precise.
But where is that limo that the hotel promised?
“Did you ask for confirmation from the hotel?” asked my 22 year old son.
‘No, but I thought it was part of the deal.’
I got some accusing looks. “Nothing forms part of a deal till you confirm it”, he tells me sagely.
I swiped the card. Entered the memorized pin number. Which would soon be forgotten once the travel card got over.
‘Joy, here’s your 50 dollars. Be careful. I want an account before you get the next 25.’
‘I suggest we take a taxi to the hotel. Not the Chrysler one though.’
The family heaved a sigh of relief. Though willing, but lugging the heavy bags on an MRT or a bus was a daunting prospect.
The trip to the hotel was nice. Very nice. The hotel was nicer. Going up to the 32nd floor on a lift through which we could see the Singapore skyline was wonderful.
The week passed like a dream. We had a lovely holiday.
“Dad, when will our country ever become like this?”
I thought hard about it. I listed out a few things which, in my personal opinion, as countrymen we must admit to ourselves honestly and do something about it.
- Sanitation. And by extension plumbing.
Till our country learnt proper hygiene, cleanliness and sanitation we will continue to spoil the countryside with open-air toilets. Similarly we needed good plumbing. We have good plumbers. Unfortunately these guys emigrate to Dubai and probably Singapore where they get a better price for their skills.
We must slot the plumbers and sanitation workers higher up in our social status. This is not so much of an infrastructure problem, more of a social kind.
As long as we tolerated the lôtă and the field toilets we remained doomed to our squalid fate.
- Bureaucracy.
A government servant by definition is exactly what it says - a servant. Available for service to the public and not the other way around. When the government employees are elevated to become masters of the masses, when we give them the highest social status then we pay a price for it. How come these guys enjoy special privileges that a common citizen doesn’t? For example some of them sport different-colored blinking lights which goes with a blaring horn to pierce through the mad traffic. Come to think of it. The traffic got worse only because those administrators who were supposed to address this issue were merrily roaming around with multi-colored contraptions fitted on top of their car. How come we never noticed, albeit in our short stay at Singapore, no such traffic-piercing vehicles?
I despair what damage job-reservations in the government for the under-privileged must have done to the country. It implies that the government jobs are goodies to be shared with the have-nots. Rather than making the entry harder so that the most committed would strive for a government job, it has become a piece of pie which can be manipulated to be obtained for oneself.
It makes me feel we are doomed for a few more centuries till we clear up this particular mess in our country.
- Air Quality (As also Water Purity).
We are prone to burning things. After all it is ordained in our ancient culture. We forget that in the olden days burning was a sort of purifying process against the forest all around and the forest-insects.
Today we have burnt away a good piece of our beautiful country in the name of purification.
Take any ceremony or any rite and we burn wood and ghee. A havan in a marriage is a must. Even cremation by burning logs for that matter. Burning degrades the air around us. I am not even talking about global-warming.
I am concerned about the everyday practice of lighting fires in our cities. Burning a garbage-heap doesn’t make it disappear. Instead of the garbage being gathered in one place it has only spread more effectively around the neighborhood.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
A Fishing Boat vs an Oil Rig
Recently I was at the port of Kochi (Cochin) with a group of scientists. We were there to test an electronic charting system (ECS) on board a fast attack-craft.
The program was to go in the morning and return by afternoon. We reached the small ship after crossing the elaborate naval security. The Commanding Officer, a young Long G (gunner) told us that the sortie could get a little delayed because his ship had also been tasked to shoo away a fishing vessel which was apparently pestering an oil-rig exploring for energy offshore.
Our plan was simple. Rig up the GPS. Set up the laptop. Connect the ECS to the GPS and AIS and get the system running. Out at sea we encountered our first snag that threatened to derail the whole exercise. The serial port to USB connector was missing. We could not connect the GPS to the laptop. It meant our electronic charting system wouldn’t function. I tried to connect the laptop’s blue tooth with another wi-fi GPS but it wasn’t working satisfactorily.
The chief scientist, an old experienced hand, said,
“I have my personal laptop. It has a nine-pin serial connector.”
The day was saved. I quickly loaded the ECS software, activated the charts with the license and connected the GPS to the serial port. The system was up and running in no time.
The ship had a tiny bridge. On top of that the CO was an aggressive fellow shouting at one and all. With all that shouting and movement we could not do our job. The mark of a good seafarer is that he can improvise on the spot. We shifted to the navigating officer’s night cabin and commissioned it into a temporary lab.
The whole day we tested the system and conducted practical training for the group of participants.
In the middle of the training the ship was stopped. They had to carry out diving at sea. Compared to a steaming ship, a stopped ship rolls much more due to the effect of waves. Most of us got a little queasy.
In the afternoon, once diving was completed the ship proceeded at full speed to open sea towards the deepwater rig to chase the trouble-maker fishing boat. The sea had picked up meanwhile. I felt a little tired. I had forgotten how bad it was on a small, noisy ship which rolled and pitching uncomfortably in sea-state 5.
I didn’t envy the CO’s job. He had to scream a lot to get the work done. I decided to never ever complain about my present job.
It was so uncomfortable I couldn’t sit anywhere. I didn’t even feel like taking notes though there were enough activities going on.
Finally we reached the oil-rig about 100 miles from the coast. There was a small miserable fishing boat close by. Doing nothing.
A naval sailor took out a loud-hailer.
Hie! Shouted the sailor in the local tongue malayali . Get out of this place. C’mon. Scram!
Nothing happened. After fifteen minutes of hollering and circling around the small boat, a wizened old dark fellow crawled out on to the deck. He was wearing just a lungi and was bare from waist upwards. The poor fellow looked at us silently. He gestured in futility at the oil rig. Then he went inside to start the boat engines.
Look at the irony of his situation. This is his fishing ground. For generations he and his ancestors have fished in this place. Out of nowhere this big oil-rig has moved in and disrupted his life.
His fishing ground was encroached upon by the foreign vessel manned by foreigners. When he protests, they put the Navy on him to shoo him away. By his logic this Navy should be protecting him instead.
After all, what was the guy doing? He is just a small fisherman. Trying to earn his livelihood by catching fish which you and me will eat. In this modern age he is already handicapped by the lack of sophisticated boats and equipment.
I mentioned this to the CO. He agreed with me whole-heartedly. But he has to obey the orders.
‘I have to report back to the headquarters.’
He is just a decent cop. He wasn’t paid to take anybody’s sides.
‘Why can’t he fish somewhere else?’
Try telling that to the fisherman. He will fish where he finds the fish. Not somewhere else. These were his fishing grounds.
After another ten minutes when the boat started to move away slowly the CO gave orders to head back towards the shore. For all he knew the fishing boat would turn back when he finds the Navy ship gone.
The CO didn’t care. He will make a report to the HQ and get on with his life.
The program was to go in the morning and return by afternoon. We reached the small ship after crossing the elaborate naval security. The Commanding Officer, a young Long G (gunner) told us that the sortie could get a little delayed because his ship had also been tasked to shoo away a fishing vessel which was apparently pestering an oil-rig exploring for energy offshore.
Our plan was simple. Rig up the GPS. Set up the laptop. Connect the ECS to the GPS and AIS and get the system running. Out at sea we encountered our first snag that threatened to derail the whole exercise. The serial port to USB connector was missing. We could not connect the GPS to the laptop. It meant our electronic charting system wouldn’t function. I tried to connect the laptop’s blue tooth with another wi-fi GPS but it wasn’t working satisfactorily.
The chief scientist, an old experienced hand, said,
“I have my personal laptop. It has a nine-pin serial connector.”
The day was saved. I quickly loaded the ECS software, activated the charts with the license and connected the GPS to the serial port. The system was up and running in no time.
The ship had a tiny bridge. On top of that the CO was an aggressive fellow shouting at one and all. With all that shouting and movement we could not do our job. The mark of a good seafarer is that he can improvise on the spot. We shifted to the navigating officer’s night cabin and commissioned it into a temporary lab.
The whole day we tested the system and conducted practical training for the group of participants.
In the middle of the training the ship was stopped. They had to carry out diving at sea. Compared to a steaming ship, a stopped ship rolls much more due to the effect of waves. Most of us got a little queasy.
In the afternoon, once diving was completed the ship proceeded at full speed to open sea towards the deepwater rig to chase the trouble-maker fishing boat. The sea had picked up meanwhile. I felt a little tired. I had forgotten how bad it was on a small, noisy ship which rolled and pitching uncomfortably in sea-state 5.
I didn’t envy the CO’s job. He had to scream a lot to get the work done. I decided to never ever complain about my present job.
It was so uncomfortable I couldn’t sit anywhere. I didn’t even feel like taking notes though there were enough activities going on.
Finally we reached the oil-rig about 100 miles from the coast. There was a small miserable fishing boat close by. Doing nothing.
A naval sailor took out a loud-hailer.
Hie! Shouted the sailor in the local tongue malayali . Get out of this place. C’mon. Scram!
Nothing happened. After fifteen minutes of hollering and circling around the small boat, a wizened old dark fellow crawled out on to the deck. He was wearing just a lungi and was bare from waist upwards. The poor fellow looked at us silently. He gestured in futility at the oil rig. Then he went inside to start the boat engines.
Look at the irony of his situation. This is his fishing ground. For generations he and his ancestors have fished in this place. Out of nowhere this big oil-rig has moved in and disrupted his life.
His fishing ground was encroached upon by the foreign vessel manned by foreigners. When he protests, they put the Navy on him to shoo him away. By his logic this Navy should be protecting him instead.
After all, what was the guy doing? He is just a small fisherman. Trying to earn his livelihood by catching fish which you and me will eat. In this modern age he is already handicapped by the lack of sophisticated boats and equipment.
I mentioned this to the CO. He agreed with me whole-heartedly. But he has to obey the orders.
‘I have to report back to the headquarters.’
He is just a decent cop. He wasn’t paid to take anybody’s sides.
‘Why can’t he fish somewhere else?’
Try telling that to the fisherman. He will fish where he finds the fish. Not somewhere else. These were his fishing grounds.
After another ten minutes when the boat started to move away slowly the CO gave orders to head back towards the shore. For all he knew the fishing boat would turn back when he finds the Navy ship gone.
The CO didn’t care. He will make a report to the HQ and get on with his life.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
A Real Hero
Last year, when my son was assigned a project on Corporate Social Responsibility in shipping industry, I gave him Capt Raj Goel’s contact to follow up.
Raj Goel was quite nice about the whole thing. He gave the youngster a detailed interview. He took his time to explain his responsibilities and specifically what his company was doing towards corporate social responsibility.
We hope we are doing our little bit for the industry by making our ports safe and secure for the ships.
At that time I didn’t know who exactly was Raj Goel and his claim to ‘fame’.
Back in 1996 I decided to leave the Navy to go into commercial shipping. The next three years I did the rounds of the maritime college. I was appearing for Master (Foreign Going) competency exams as well as going through the numerous modular courses.
During this period amongst our shipping circles we used to hear stories about an Indian Master who was languishing in a jail in Taiwan. Apparently his ship had collided with a fishing trawler killing some fishermen. The Master was all alone in an alien land.
I used to feel uneasy listening to the rumors about him. Since it had happened to a stranger it all seemed a little remote and unreal.
Some months back another Indian Master, Capt Glen Aroza’s name popped up in the shipping circles. He had been arrested after his ship had collided with a boat off Taiwan causing the death of some fishermen.
The news on the net said that it was virtually a repeat of Capt Raj Goel’s incident. It dawned on me that they were talking about the same fellow.
Our offices were in the same building. Sometimes I met Raj in the premises but at no point during our association of 3 years he let out the terrible ordeal that he had undergone in the past.
I trawled the net and came across the site where Raj had posted details of his detention at Keelung, a port in Taiwan.
I went to meet the gentleman. As usual he welcomed me with a smile. He shut down his laptop, got up from his chair and shook hands with me.
Over a cup of tea he told me his story.
Coming back to sea after a 5 month lay-off, he had just taken over as the Master of a big container vessel on 04th February ‘96. The ship sailed out from Hong Kong bound for Los Angeles. That same night the incident happened.
The third officer was on watch on the bridge that time. He had given a hard wheel to avoid a boat. He called the Master after the course alteration. Raj came up on the bridge to assess the situation. They didn’t find anything amiss. They didn’t realize that the ship had gone over the net of a trawler.
Later during the investigations it was concluded that the long wire of the trawler had snagged upon the bow of the huge ship. The boat had dragged behind till it capsized.
Meanwhile the net had fouled the propeller. Within the next few hours the propeller RPM came down and the ship’s speed reduced. The ship decided to enter Taiwan to get her propellers checked. In the port the police came on board. The Master and the third officer were arrested.
From being the Master of a huge ship with a spacious captains cabin Raj Goel found himself in a 7’ x 10’ filthy cell sharing the space with four petty criminals. For the next five and half months he remained in this cell without bail.
In my clear conscience I could not comprehend what is it that I have done to deserve this treatment. One day I was Captain of a ship and the next day I found myself in a small prison cell in an unknown land.
‘Was the judge harsh on you?’ I asked.
Raj shook his head. “The judge was nice. He couldn’t give me bail immediately because then the fishermen lobby would had got angry.”
When he finally got bail the P&I club arranged for a house for the three Indians – the Master, third and the able-seaman. The AB left shortly because there was no case against him. He was actually the duty AB on paper. He was never on the bridge when the incident happened.
Raj was detained for the next three years waiting for the law to take its own course. At the end the courts found him innocent and acquitted him of all charges. He was allowed to return to India.
‘Did the Indian government help’, I asked.
“No. Our government doesn’t do much. Had it been an American or European citizen or even a Taiwanese for that matter their government takes up their causes very strongly.”
The ordeal had taken its toll. His family suffered when he was far away and helpless to do anything. Raj Goel was an unfortunate victim of criminalization of seafarers. In any marine incident the ship and the master in an alien country becomes a soft target.
What sustained him through all those years?
“Letters written by children telling me not to worry, that they were praying to God. Those letters are my prized possessions today.”
After returning to India he was sitting at home without a job for over a year. Yet he didn’t allow this terrible episode to overwhelm him. After five years he finally got a job. He sailed for another three years and then switched over to a shore job. In 2007 he joined Silver Port Services because it offered more challenges.
Today by any yardstick he is a successful man. He wants to contribute to the same industry that had ditched him earlier.
Said Susruto Das, his batchmate from TS Rajendra, "Goel is a very helpful chap. Today he has a nice family with two lovely kids and a flat on Palm Beach Road."
When my son went to him with his project, he was patient with him. He gave his precious time to answer the questions with all sincerity. He never let the boy feel how busy he was or how great his position.
I never detected any bitterness in Raj. For sure he has enough reasons. He never cried how unfair the world was or why me? On the contrary he always has a smile on his face. He quietly performs a high-pressure job. If at all he has a mild complaint it is about the work pressure that is catching up.
Today he doesn’t mind raking up his unpleasant past because "he feels that experiences and knowledge are only worth if they can help others."
Amazing!
To me he is a real hero. I wish I can claim the same determination the gentleman has. To beat back all that life could throw at him and emerge victorious. And never utter a word of it.
I am privileged to share my first name with him.
--------------------------------------------------
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Commercial Compulsions
‘How could he do it?’ thundered the instructor.
‘As a Master you cannot ignore a distress call at sea. SOLAS clearly puts the obligation on a Master. He has to save the lives of fellow seafarers. It is given in IAMSAR also. All through the centuries this has been an unwritten law which every seafarer has obeyed. SOLAS has even made it into an international law.
‘The Master of the other vessel had to be present at the scene of distress – if nothing else at least for the sake of humanity.’
I was attending the Master Revalidation course at MASSA Maritime Academy. The class was discussing the Red Sea incident which took place in February this year. Al-Salam, the Egyptian ferry had sunk 80 miles off Safaga in heavy seas. More than 1000 lives were lost and this was 2006. By all accounts it was a tragic incident, but entirely avoidable.
The Master of Al-Salam had initially refused to sail out because the vessel was overloaded. Bowing to commercial compulsions he took the vessel out. Mid-sea the vessel caught fire, which went out of control because it was detected late. Then the fire-fighters put so much of water trying to douse the fire that the vessel developed a list. The ship ultimately sank. Bad weather and heavy seas contributed to the many lives that were lost.
The most unfortunate part according to Capt Panda was that there was another ship in the vicinity, belonging to the same company, which ignored the distress call and continued on its passage. By the time other ships could reach the spot 10 hours later it was too late.
By his own admission the Master of the second vessel St. Catherine had refused to help because ‘the weather was bad and he feared the safety of 1800 passengers on board’. This vessel belonging to the same company was equally overloaded. The Master had conferred with the company director sitting in his office and they had mutually decided that St. Catherine should continue on its passage to avoid another disaster. There was a huge uproar after the massive loss of lives and some scapegoats had to be found. The authorities needed to show some results. The owner, incidentally, had fled to England. The Master of St. Catherine was immediately taken into custody on his arrival and put behind bars.
When Titanic sank in 1912 there weren’t any written laws for vessels to render assistance. Yet Captain Rostron master of Carpathia reacted in a most professional manner when he received the SOS. This was the first time he was responding to a distress call. He immediately altered course and proceeded at full dispatch towards Titanic 58 miles away. Carpathia reached within two hours of the sinking of Titanic. Had she not responded in this manner another 700 would had been added to the list of dead.
These are the long-standing traditions of the sea. SOLAS was adopted in response to the Titanic disaster. In it is spelt out the responsibilities and obligations of ships’ masters to render assistance thus:
The Master of a ship at sea which is in a position to be able to provide assistance, on receiving a signal from any source that persons are in distress at sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance, if possible informing them or the search and rescue service that the ship is doing so….
Humanity! For the sake of humanity seafarers must help each other. What’s happening to humanity?
Our class of experienced seafarers was there to learn. In the safe AC environs of the classroom words flowed easily. The bunch of hardened mariners was looking here and there avoiding each others eyes.
‘Sir, I want to say something.’ All eyes turned towards a young chap who had a belligerent look.
‘The conditions on board a ship are not the same nowadays. What humanity are we talking about? I was in a ship crossing the Atlantic. We sailed out of Malaga - Spain bound for US. Five hundred miles out into the sea and the Master makes a dreadful discovery. He finds a stowaway.’
There was a collective groan in the class. The Master’s worst nightmare had come true. A stowaway is like an unwanted pregnancy. Nobody wants to hold the baby. Most times the stowaway doesn’t belong to the country from where he got on board. Nobody will accept him, neither the port from where he came on board and certainly not the country to which he wants to go to. The ship becomes the unfortunate carrier. The company suffers tremendous losses trying to solve the problem in the name of humanity.
In this case the Master was miserable. He was new in his command and one such incident could finish his career. All those years of painstaking work and studies would vanish in thin air just because the @#$%*^ stowaway decided to board his vessel.
The Master called a meeting of the top four. He, Chief Engineer, Chief Officer and the Second Engineer went into a huddle.
‘Bara Saab, You are the most experienced amongst us. I have spoken to the Super and he told me to take your advice. What should we do?’
The Chief Engineer was livid with anger. The problem wasn’t his creation. He knew he was being blackmailed. The Super will pay heavily for this.
‘So, what did they do?’ asked the instructor
‘Ask this question to the Master. He spoke to the company. Fortunately the stowaway was overpowered and trussed up. He was a black from the interiors of Africa. Nobody understood what he said and nobody was likely to miss him either. The Master called some trusted crew members in his cabin that night. In the morning the black guy had disappeared.’
‘I was a second-mate that time. All I know is that the Chief Officer was not a willing party to this incident. After the voyage the Chief Officer lost his job. The Master is still in the same company and sailing merrily.’
We were all quiet and listening. As seafarers we have become slaves to commercial compulsions. ETAs have to be met. Fuel has to be conserved. Perishable cargoes need to be delivered. Where is the time to think about humanity?
No Master will stop his vessel in pirate-infested waters to pick up a distressed soul. The ship is not like a car. Changing over from heavy fuel to diesel for coming to maneuvering state is a lengthy process and takes hours. The vessel is not built for easy maneuvers.
When you see somebody in a boat waving his shirt you can’t believe that this is happening to you. Who knows whether he is really distressed or he is just another scheming bastard. Waiting to board and rob your vessel.
Why are the other ships out there not stopping?
Simply close your eyes and continue on your passage. Hope like hell that the authorities will not question you. And if they did – I didn’t see anything.
Commercial compulsions have resulted in reduced manning. With 16 or fewer people on board we simply do not have the capability to tackle an emergency. Life on board is stressed. Every minute on board is accounted for. Watch-keeping, meals, loading-unloading and sleep.
Those days are gone when there was time to relax and play games. Today if a boat has to be lowered the requisite excess crew members are not available. The exercise impinges on your daily routine. It only means the crew will lose out on their precious sleeping time.
In an age when masters are constantly asked to improve efficiency and cut costs, commercial compulsions have tossed humanity out of the port hole.
Paise gino aur chalte bano. Count your money and scoot.
________________________________________
Post Script: From 01st July 2006 amendments to IMO conventions entered into force regarding persons in distress at sea. The onus of providing succour to people in distress (and stowaways) is not the master’s alone – the contracting states are equally obligated. Secondly no company wallah can prevent the master to act as per his discretion to save lives at sea.
A small step taken to make the Master’s life easier.
Food for thought: If ship-owners and masters were to be rewarded and all expenses incurred towards helping people in distress reimbursed from a specially created fund, will it help us to discharge our duties more humanely?
‘As a Master you cannot ignore a distress call at sea. SOLAS clearly puts the obligation on a Master. He has to save the lives of fellow seafarers. It is given in IAMSAR also. All through the centuries this has been an unwritten law which every seafarer has obeyed. SOLAS has even made it into an international law.
‘The Master of the other vessel had to be present at the scene of distress – if nothing else at least for the sake of humanity.’
I was attending the Master Revalidation course at MASSA Maritime Academy. The class was discussing the Red Sea incident which took place in February this year. Al-Salam, the Egyptian ferry had sunk 80 miles off Safaga in heavy seas. More than 1000 lives were lost and this was 2006. By all accounts it was a tragic incident, but entirely avoidable.
The Master of Al-Salam had initially refused to sail out because the vessel was overloaded. Bowing to commercial compulsions he took the vessel out. Mid-sea the vessel caught fire, which went out of control because it was detected late. Then the fire-fighters put so much of water trying to douse the fire that the vessel developed a list. The ship ultimately sank. Bad weather and heavy seas contributed to the many lives that were lost.
The most unfortunate part according to Capt Panda was that there was another ship in the vicinity, belonging to the same company, which ignored the distress call and continued on its passage. By the time other ships could reach the spot 10 hours later it was too late.
By his own admission the Master of the second vessel St. Catherine had refused to help because ‘the weather was bad and he feared the safety of 1800 passengers on board’. This vessel belonging to the same company was equally overloaded. The Master had conferred with the company director sitting in his office and they had mutually decided that St. Catherine should continue on its passage to avoid another disaster. There was a huge uproar after the massive loss of lives and some scapegoats had to be found. The authorities needed to show some results. The owner, incidentally, had fled to England. The Master of St. Catherine was immediately taken into custody on his arrival and put behind bars.
When Titanic sank in 1912 there weren’t any written laws for vessels to render assistance. Yet Captain Rostron master of Carpathia reacted in a most professional manner when he received the SOS. This was the first time he was responding to a distress call. He immediately altered course and proceeded at full dispatch towards Titanic 58 miles away. Carpathia reached within two hours of the sinking of Titanic. Had she not responded in this manner another 700 would had been added to the list of dead.
These are the long-standing traditions of the sea. SOLAS was adopted in response to the Titanic disaster. In it is spelt out the responsibilities and obligations of ships’ masters to render assistance thus:
The Master of a ship at sea which is in a position to be able to provide assistance, on receiving a signal from any source that persons are in distress at sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance, if possible informing them or the search and rescue service that the ship is doing so….
Humanity! For the sake of humanity seafarers must help each other. What’s happening to humanity?
Our class of experienced seafarers was there to learn. In the safe AC environs of the classroom words flowed easily. The bunch of hardened mariners was looking here and there avoiding each others eyes.
‘Sir, I want to say something.’ All eyes turned towards a young chap who had a belligerent look.
‘The conditions on board a ship are not the same nowadays. What humanity are we talking about? I was in a ship crossing the Atlantic. We sailed out of Malaga - Spain bound for US. Five hundred miles out into the sea and the Master makes a dreadful discovery. He finds a stowaway.’
There was a collective groan in the class. The Master’s worst nightmare had come true. A stowaway is like an unwanted pregnancy. Nobody wants to hold the baby. Most times the stowaway doesn’t belong to the country from where he got on board. Nobody will accept him, neither the port from where he came on board and certainly not the country to which he wants to go to. The ship becomes the unfortunate carrier. The company suffers tremendous losses trying to solve the problem in the name of humanity.
In this case the Master was miserable. He was new in his command and one such incident could finish his career. All those years of painstaking work and studies would vanish in thin air just because the @#$%*^ stowaway decided to board his vessel.
The Master called a meeting of the top four. He, Chief Engineer, Chief Officer and the Second Engineer went into a huddle.
‘Bara Saab, You are the most experienced amongst us. I have spoken to the Super and he told me to take your advice. What should we do?’
The Chief Engineer was livid with anger. The problem wasn’t his creation. He knew he was being blackmailed. The Super will pay heavily for this.
‘So, what did they do?’ asked the instructor
‘Ask this question to the Master. He spoke to the company. Fortunately the stowaway was overpowered and trussed up. He was a black from the interiors of Africa. Nobody understood what he said and nobody was likely to miss him either. The Master called some trusted crew members in his cabin that night. In the morning the black guy had disappeared.’
‘I was a second-mate that time. All I know is that the Chief Officer was not a willing party to this incident. After the voyage the Chief Officer lost his job. The Master is still in the same company and sailing merrily.’
We were all quiet and listening. As seafarers we have become slaves to commercial compulsions. ETAs have to be met. Fuel has to be conserved. Perishable cargoes need to be delivered. Where is the time to think about humanity?
No Master will stop his vessel in pirate-infested waters to pick up a distressed soul. The ship is not like a car. Changing over from heavy fuel to diesel for coming to maneuvering state is a lengthy process and takes hours. The vessel is not built for easy maneuvers.
When you see somebody in a boat waving his shirt you can’t believe that this is happening to you. Who knows whether he is really distressed or he is just another scheming bastard. Waiting to board and rob your vessel.
Why are the other ships out there not stopping?
Simply close your eyes and continue on your passage. Hope like hell that the authorities will not question you. And if they did – I didn’t see anything.
Commercial compulsions have resulted in reduced manning. With 16 or fewer people on board we simply do not have the capability to tackle an emergency. Life on board is stressed. Every minute on board is accounted for. Watch-keeping, meals, loading-unloading and sleep.
Those days are gone when there was time to relax and play games. Today if a boat has to be lowered the requisite excess crew members are not available. The exercise impinges on your daily routine. It only means the crew will lose out on their precious sleeping time.
In an age when masters are constantly asked to improve efficiency and cut costs, commercial compulsions have tossed humanity out of the port hole.
Paise gino aur chalte bano. Count your money and scoot.
________________________________________
Post Script: From 01st July 2006 amendments to IMO conventions entered into force regarding persons in distress at sea. The onus of providing succour to people in distress (and stowaways) is not the master’s alone – the contracting states are equally obligated. Secondly no company wallah can prevent the master to act as per his discretion to save lives at sea.
A small step taken to make the Master’s life easier.
Food for thought: If ship-owners and masters were to be rewarded and all expenses incurred towards helping people in distress reimbursed from a specially created fund, will it help us to discharge our duties more humanely?
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Seafarers Fatigue
It is common for a guy on a ship to routinely follow a 100+ hour-week, month after month. It’s not surprising therefore to find serious accidents happening as a result of fatigue.
The well analyzed incident of grounding of Exxon Valdez that happened more than 20 years back had documented the effect of fatigue leading to the great oil-spill. Yet, even now we don’t have a cut and dried solution to address this issue of seafarers’ fatigue.
I mean, by now the authorities should had found some solution like putting more people, giving enough rest hours or compensating for the extra work (not by overtime allowance which will actually encourage working towards fatigue).
Having said that, in my own case I used to find work on board ship was better than say watching a movie in the smoke room or playing a video game. It acted as a balm to the loneliness we suffered on board.
The other day I was browsing through the jottings in my diary. I came across this noting made on 14th Jan 2002. At that point of time I had already spent two months on board the oil-tanker with another 4 months to go. I listed out various methods to overcome the pangs of loneliness:
- look for the company of others
- have lots of friends
- read plenty of books
- how about liquor? A drink or two or a bit more can help in passing the time
- developing a passion
Finally I came to the conclusion that within the limitations that I was in, the best antidote was to immerse myself in work.
As such none of us had come to the ship for a picnic. Once you are away from family and home the overriding aim is to earn the maximum so that we could go back to our lives ashore. That is if your life still existed back there.
A few hardened seafarers do not have any life back home. Some of them are the mal-adjusted people on board. With whom you are confined for months till either you sign off or that fellow goes. It’s quite stressful to say the least.
I remember all of us looked forward to short-hand allowance wherein we could earn the salary of the person temporarily absent from the ship. Nobody ever cribbed or complained on account of the extra work. Most times the company was quite happy to distribute the absent-seafarer's pay to others in a ratio as decided by the master. Less people meant lesser management problems.
Were we stressed? Oh Yes! But, at least in my case, I used to find stress was better than the boredom of doing nothing or suffering from pangs of loneliness. So we used to somehow pull along till the end of our contract. Those days getting a relief was not always a smooth affair. Many times a month or two would pass before we got our reliefs. Those were the toughest times to pass. Stress was high and so was the frustration of being away from the family.
A little stress is good. It puts you on the edge and you actually avoid accidents caused due to callous actions or over-confidence. But how much stress should we take and when do we put a stop to it? Difficult questions to ask to those who consider 105 hour-week normal.
IMO is seriously studying this complicated issue. The Warsash Maritime Academy is launching a project named Horizon under the sponsorship of the European Union. The project will address the concerns over the increasing human, financial and environmental losses of maritime accidents caused due to fatigue.
Its stated objective is ”To provide a realistic, high fidelity, voyage scenario in which watch-keeper cognitive performance can be measured.”
Though, I have my doubts whether it is possible to replicate in a class-room the real stress out there. Most watch-keepers treat simulators as another video game and I dare say so would the on-leave volunteers from the group of young second mates who are going to participate in this project.
How does one replicate job-related tensions, intimidation by seniors on-board and by the shore-staff, tide and weather conditions, inspections, (poor) working conditions of machinery, hawsers or other riggings?
At least a start is being made and the authorities have recognized that stress and fatigue are important factors towards human-errors. For which they should be lauded. After all studies have concluded that 80 percent of all the maritime accidents that are caused are due to human-errors.
The well analyzed incident of grounding of Exxon Valdez that happened more than 20 years back had documented the effect of fatigue leading to the great oil-spill. Yet, even now we don’t have a cut and dried solution to address this issue of seafarers’ fatigue.
I mean, by now the authorities should had found some solution like putting more people, giving enough rest hours or compensating for the extra work (not by overtime allowance which will actually encourage working towards fatigue).
Having said that, in my own case I used to find work on board ship was better than say watching a movie in the smoke room or playing a video game. It acted as a balm to the loneliness we suffered on board.
The other day I was browsing through the jottings in my diary. I came across this noting made on 14th Jan 2002. At that point of time I had already spent two months on board the oil-tanker with another 4 months to go. I listed out various methods to overcome the pangs of loneliness:
- look for the company of others
- have lots of friends
- read plenty of books
- how about liquor? A drink or two or a bit more can help in passing the time
- developing a passion
Finally I came to the conclusion that within the limitations that I was in, the best antidote was to immerse myself in work.
As such none of us had come to the ship for a picnic. Once you are away from family and home the overriding aim is to earn the maximum so that we could go back to our lives ashore. That is if your life still existed back there.
A few hardened seafarers do not have any life back home. Some of them are the mal-adjusted people on board. With whom you are confined for months till either you sign off or that fellow goes. It’s quite stressful to say the least.
I remember all of us looked forward to short-hand allowance wherein we could earn the salary of the person temporarily absent from the ship. Nobody ever cribbed or complained on account of the extra work. Most times the company was quite happy to distribute the absent-seafarer's pay to others in a ratio as decided by the master. Less people meant lesser management problems.
Were we stressed? Oh Yes! But, at least in my case, I used to find stress was better than the boredom of doing nothing or suffering from pangs of loneliness. So we used to somehow pull along till the end of our contract. Those days getting a relief was not always a smooth affair. Many times a month or two would pass before we got our reliefs. Those were the toughest times to pass. Stress was high and so was the frustration of being away from the family.
A little stress is good. It puts you on the edge and you actually avoid accidents caused due to callous actions or over-confidence. But how much stress should we take and when do we put a stop to it? Difficult questions to ask to those who consider 105 hour-week normal.
IMO is seriously studying this complicated issue. The Warsash Maritime Academy is launching a project named Horizon under the sponsorship of the European Union. The project will address the concerns over the increasing human, financial and environmental losses of maritime accidents caused due to fatigue.
Its stated objective is ”To provide a realistic, high fidelity, voyage scenario in which watch-keeper cognitive performance can be measured.”
Though, I have my doubts whether it is possible to replicate in a class-room the real stress out there. Most watch-keepers treat simulators as another video game and I dare say so would the on-leave volunteers from the group of young second mates who are going to participate in this project.
How does one replicate job-related tensions, intimidation by seniors on-board and by the shore-staff, tide and weather conditions, inspections, (poor) working conditions of machinery, hawsers or other riggings?
At least a start is being made and the authorities have recognized that stress and fatigue are important factors towards human-errors. For which they should be lauded. After all studies have concluded that 80 percent of all the maritime accidents that are caused are due to human-errors.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
An Expo Advisory Board
From time to time I attend this particular shipping exhibition board meetings at an impressive boardroom located on a high-rise overlooking the Arabian Sea. I am one of the regular members. More regular than most. Yet my contribution to the proceedings is merely as a spectator.
The chairman of this group is the head honcho of a shipping company. He is a lovable fellow and takes his job seriously. As a chairman-material he looks good to me. Of course I have not had the privilege of watching other chairmen from close quarters.
Sometimes I wonder why they call me at all. I did participate 3 years back in one of their shipping exhibitions with an independent stall. I guess where stall-owners are concerned I am one of the easily accessible types. Thereafter they put me as part of the committee for the last two exhibitions.
The owner of the exhibition is a business tycoon. I find him as an effusive fellow. Though short in stature he walks tall in the society. Ever smiling and ever optimistic. Nothing, I repeat nothing fazes him. Recession, slowdowns, competition, elusive customers and such, nothing affects his demeanor. In every bleak situation he sees a silver lining or an opportunity.
This tycoon openly praises the meeting attendees. He reserves his choicest praise for the chairman though. So much so that the chairman has to tell him to lay off.
“The worst thing anyone can do is to praise someone in front of him. I feel very embarassed”
Nevertheless, he laps up all the praise. Perhaps the small shipping community works in a clannish manner. Where applause and pat-on-the-backs create a pleasant atmosphere.
Some of the members are organizers. One of them is a South Indian fellow. I call him the smiling work-horse. I think his motto is:
“I will work till I fall down from exhaustion.”
The fellow has a sharp brain. In the meeting he rattles off all the details in a typical South Indian manner. Taking suggestions from everyone nodding and smiling, but is the final word on deciding upon the course of action. He gets done the maximum in the meeting. The other members who are delegated with other responsibilities are either too efficient or under-worked.
At every meeting there are some good snacks or good food. I like to eat the cashew-nuts and the pastries and all the other goodies. At the end of the meeting my plate is the cleanest.
Then there is this charming lady. The shipping company which belongs to our chairman is her big customer. I don’t know if such proximity to top bosses help in the business. Come to think of it, they are my customer too. Albeit a small one. But I don’t find any advantage in knowing the top bosses. Firstly they never talk about business. Secondly the actual dealings are controlled by the second rung leaders. In fact I find being bummy-chummy with the bosses is an impedance. The second rung bosses are not comfortable with you. Maybe I haven’t yet learnt how to be business savvy. The charming lady I’m sure is making a major part of her millions from this company.
Fine. So what do I gain from attending these meetings. Some of the industry captains now know me by face. Then again I don’t see too many shipowners or their reps in the board meetings. Once in a while the bureaucrats come. DG,JNPT chairman. Very rarely does the Nautical Advisor come.
At one of the lunch get-togethers I found myself talking to an old gentleman. He retired about 17 – 18 years back from shipping. But he continues to remain associated with the shipping industry one way or the other. He must be around 80.
I commented perhaps he is the oldest man in the shipping industry. Promptly he quipped
“Not me. I’m the third oldest. My cousin Ketan is the oldest. I joined in 1950. My cousin joined Great Eastern Shipping in 1948.”
The old gentleman narrated how after the second World War his cousin was sent to the US to purchase one of the liberty class ships which had become redundant after the war. The ship was bought at scrap price. Armed with that vessel and adding some more in the next few years the Great Eastern Shipping company started the Indian coastal trading.
One day I have to sit down with him and listen to all the stories he probably has in his repertoire. After all he has being associated with the Indian maritime industry for the last 60 years post independence.
The chairman of this group is the head honcho of a shipping company. He is a lovable fellow and takes his job seriously. As a chairman-material he looks good to me. Of course I have not had the privilege of watching other chairmen from close quarters.
Sometimes I wonder why they call me at all. I did participate 3 years back in one of their shipping exhibitions with an independent stall. I guess where stall-owners are concerned I am one of the easily accessible types. Thereafter they put me as part of the committee for the last two exhibitions.
The owner of the exhibition is a business tycoon. I find him as an effusive fellow. Though short in stature he walks tall in the society. Ever smiling and ever optimistic. Nothing, I repeat nothing fazes him. Recession, slowdowns, competition, elusive customers and such, nothing affects his demeanor. In every bleak situation he sees a silver lining or an opportunity.
This tycoon openly praises the meeting attendees. He reserves his choicest praise for the chairman though. So much so that the chairman has to tell him to lay off.
“The worst thing anyone can do is to praise someone in front of him. I feel very embarassed”
Nevertheless, he laps up all the praise. Perhaps the small shipping community works in a clannish manner. Where applause and pat-on-the-backs create a pleasant atmosphere.
Some of the members are organizers. One of them is a South Indian fellow. I call him the smiling work-horse. I think his motto is:
“I will work till I fall down from exhaustion.”
The fellow has a sharp brain. In the meeting he rattles off all the details in a typical South Indian manner. Taking suggestions from everyone nodding and smiling, but is the final word on deciding upon the course of action. He gets done the maximum in the meeting. The other members who are delegated with other responsibilities are either too efficient or under-worked.
At every meeting there are some good snacks or good food. I like to eat the cashew-nuts and the pastries and all the other goodies. At the end of the meeting my plate is the cleanest.
Then there is this charming lady. The shipping company which belongs to our chairman is her big customer. I don’t know if such proximity to top bosses help in the business. Come to think of it, they are my customer too. Albeit a small one. But I don’t find any advantage in knowing the top bosses. Firstly they never talk about business. Secondly the actual dealings are controlled by the second rung leaders. In fact I find being bummy-chummy with the bosses is an impedance. The second rung bosses are not comfortable with you. Maybe I haven’t yet learnt how to be business savvy. The charming lady I’m sure is making a major part of her millions from this company.
Fine. So what do I gain from attending these meetings. Some of the industry captains now know me by face. Then again I don’t see too many shipowners or their reps in the board meetings. Once in a while the bureaucrats come. DG,JNPT chairman. Very rarely does the Nautical Advisor come.
At one of the lunch get-togethers I found myself talking to an old gentleman. He retired about 17 – 18 years back from shipping. But he continues to remain associated with the shipping industry one way or the other. He must be around 80.
I commented perhaps he is the oldest man in the shipping industry. Promptly he quipped
“Not me. I’m the third oldest. My cousin Ketan is the oldest. I joined in 1950. My cousin joined Great Eastern Shipping in 1948.”
The old gentleman narrated how after the second World War his cousin was sent to the US to purchase one of the liberty class ships which had become redundant after the war. The ship was bought at scrap price. Armed with that vessel and adding some more in the next few years the Great Eastern Shipping company started the Indian coastal trading.
One day I have to sit down with him and listen to all the stories he probably has in his repertoire. After all he has being associated with the Indian maritime industry for the last 60 years post independence.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Who will be my Competitor Tomorrow?
The first time I left my house to go to the hostel my mother packed an alarm clock with me. It was my most precious possession. Every night I would wind up the thing which would wake me up the next day. Without this I couldn’t had survived the military regimen.
The other day I accompanied my eighty year old mother to the market. Our old alarm clock had finally stopped working. We were disappointed. We hunted all around but we just didn’t find a shop where they could repair the clock. Neither could we find a shop selling mechanical alarm clocks to replace it.
When I read this interesting article Have Breakfast or be Breakfast by Professor Y.L.R. Moorthi from IIM Bangalore I realized the whole world had switched over to cell-phone alarms.
According to Moorthi some of the biggest companies in this world have faced competition from quarters they never expected. And guess what, many of these giants lost or disappeared from the scene.
Examples –
• The largest camera sellers in India – not Sony, Canon or Nikon but Nokia cameras bundled with cell-phones.
• The biggest music business in India – Airtel. By selling caller tunes.
• The toughest competitor to airlines – video-conferencing services.
• Who is giving the Indian film industry nightmares? IPL cricket with its shorter 20-20 version. This three-hour tamashaa (entertainment) is pulling the crowds away from the multiplexes.
Which set me thinking about navigation charts. In India BA paper charts rule. It used to infuriate a senior Indian hydrographer to no end. In his interaction with commercial shipping industry he found no one seemed to be using Indian charts. Once on a visit to a premier shipping college this hydrographer found under-trainees being taught from Capt Puri’s book on Chart Work where it stated ‘charts mean BA charts’. He found many navigators had not even heard of National Hydrographic Office at Dehra Dun which makes Indian charts.
Today who is the serious competitor to BA charts? Not NOAA or any other HO but C-Map charts now taken over by Jeppesen. In the eighties and nineties Dr. Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti had led Navionics and C-Map digital charting companies respectively and created a market in the light marine sector where there was none. UKHO probably lost the opportunity here because developing electronic charts would have affected its colossal paper chart business
The big question is who will be the competitor to UKHO and Jeppesen tomorrow?
I don’t know. The competition could be lurking anywhere. Maybe it will be one of these cell companies or Yahoo or Google. If cell-phone companies can somehow enlarge the small screen then the map agencies will find them a difficult competitor.
We have to wait and see how the future unfolds.
The other day I accompanied my eighty year old mother to the market. Our old alarm clock had finally stopped working. We were disappointed. We hunted all around but we just didn’t find a shop where they could repair the clock. Neither could we find a shop selling mechanical alarm clocks to replace it.
When I read this interesting article Have Breakfast or be Breakfast by Professor Y.L.R. Moorthi from IIM Bangalore I realized the whole world had switched over to cell-phone alarms.
According to Moorthi some of the biggest companies in this world have faced competition from quarters they never expected. And guess what, many of these giants lost or disappeared from the scene.
Examples –
• The largest camera sellers in India – not Sony, Canon or Nikon but Nokia cameras bundled with cell-phones.
• The biggest music business in India – Airtel. By selling caller tunes.
• The toughest competitor to airlines – video-conferencing services.
• Who is giving the Indian film industry nightmares? IPL cricket with its shorter 20-20 version. This three-hour tamashaa (entertainment) is pulling the crowds away from the multiplexes.
Which set me thinking about navigation charts. In India BA paper charts rule. It used to infuriate a senior Indian hydrographer to no end. In his interaction with commercial shipping industry he found no one seemed to be using Indian charts. Once on a visit to a premier shipping college this hydrographer found under-trainees being taught from Capt Puri’s book on Chart Work where it stated ‘charts mean BA charts’. He found many navigators had not even heard of National Hydrographic Office at Dehra Dun which makes Indian charts.
Today who is the serious competitor to BA charts? Not NOAA or any other HO but C-Map charts now taken over by Jeppesen. In the eighties and nineties Dr. Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti had led Navionics and C-Map digital charting companies respectively and created a market in the light marine sector where there was none. UKHO probably lost the opportunity here because developing electronic charts would have affected its colossal paper chart business
The big question is who will be the competitor to UKHO and Jeppesen tomorrow?
I don’t know. The competition could be lurking anywhere. Maybe it will be one of these cell companies or Yahoo or Google. If cell-phone companies can somehow enlarge the small screen then the map agencies will find them a difficult competitor.
We have to wait and see how the future unfolds.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Train Travel
Rahul Gandhi, the youth congress leader, came to Mumbai despite being ‘warned’ by Shiv Sena, took a train-ride like an everyday commuter. The media went ballistic. Daring the tiger in his own den. Even if the tiger is just a paper tiger now. Still it was sweet news for the rest of the country who are fed up with the divisive politics of Sena. At least that’s what I thought.
When I asked Kuki, my neighbour’s daughter, her opinion, she was dismissive about the whole thing. Just a tamashaa.
"Let him travel everyday by train like we do. Commuting for one day doesn’t mean anything."
It reminded me of my days in the train. And a piece I wrote after a bomb-attack. I was quite bitter about the sympathy Mumbaikars got from the rest of the country. Mainly because only regular commuters understand the plight of a fellow-commuter. Any way here’s what I wrote in July 2006.
In the Warzone
Four years back I decided to try my hand for a shore job. So, after signing off from the ship I joined the teaching faculty and started teaching at Naval Maritime Academy. I used to travel by local from Nerul to VT. A distance of 54 kms took one hour to cover. This was the first time in my life I was commuting daily by trains. I had graduated, so to say, to become a true Mumbaikar depending on the local trains for my bread and butter.
Those days the Harbour line was not at all crowded as compared to the Western and Central line. I had with me a first class season pass. The crowd in the first class were the office going type and, in the non-peak hours there was enough space to put up our feet on the opposite seats and stretch out comfortably.
My day was a fixed routine and my life revolved around the 06:58 local. From home to the station was a 7-minute walk. Some days if I was running late I hopped in an auto for a quick ride. So….. 06:50 leave home, 06:58 catch the local, 08:01 reach VT. The 1 hour in the train was meant to prepare my lectures and plan out the rest of the day.
On reaching VT I used to cross the subway at a brisk pace and catch the Academy bus leaving at 08:10. The bus zoomed through Cuffe Parade and Colaba where we could see some of the eminent residents returning from the morning work-outs. It was still quite early in the day for the office crowd to throng the roads. At 08:25 I would reach the Academy, grab a cup of tea, before rushing for the first lecture starting at 08:30. The return trip was flexible and depending on the classes could be as early as 01:30 PM. I had lot of time for myself unlike a typical 9 to 5 job.
I came to recognize most of the regulars on the train in that one year. We had a strange camaraderie. I do not remember ever speaking to anyone of them. We used to acknowledge each other by the merest of the smiles and mostly it was by the softening of our facial features. Generally Mumbai local train commuters wear a grim face.
Today I hardly travel by the trains. But I do not miss them. The crowds have become unbearable and the conditions have deteriorated. Back then there was no need to fight for a seat. The rains are more severe today and tracks are flooded very easily. Life in the local trains has become bad. For a second class commuter it is even worse.
When the Western line suffered the serial blasts I felt an immense sadness. As such the commuter has a lot of hardships. He is totally dependent on the smooth running of the train. A slight delay or problem on the way throws his life out of gear. The trains are his lifeline.
There is really no other way to travel for those who stay far from their workplace.
Buses take too long, and the bad roads make long-distance commuting impossible. Similarly daily commuting by car is not practical, even if one could afford the high cost. Day in and day out you have to live through this mindless existence. Nothing can replace the local train – crowds, ramshackle coaches and miserable views notwithstanding. In terms of time taken and cost of traveling.
I don’t think Mumbaikars were back on the trains so soon after the blast because they can ‘bounce back’. Despite the fear of life and limbs and the sadness for the fellow commuters who died or lay injured, they willed their hearts to step into the boxcar. For what other options did they have?
I don’t know why the terrorists chose to plant the bombs in the trains. I don’t think the bombs could keep the crowd away for more than 24 hours. Perhaps a more dangerous deterrent would had been poisonous chemicals. After all that sound and fury of a bomb-blast only 200 people died.
Once I tried to count the number of people in a jam-packed coach. Four to a bench x 64 benches = 256. Plus 100 standees. 350 to a coach x 9 coaches x 150 trains x 3 routes! One and a half million! Do our locals carry so many every day? Three crore rupees generated everyday by sale of tickets! Is anybody auditing these figures? Where is the money going? Why is this not getting translated to a better deal for the commuters? Why do we have to travel in such inhuman conditions?
Look around yourself in a second class. Only common people travel in these coaches regularly. They don’t have the time and the inclination to protest. Most of them wear a glazed expression on their faces. But they all have a dream. An eternal hope in their hearts that one day a new line will be miraculously laid and super-fast trains will glide smoothly over it, and take them to their destinations in luxury. Like the ones on which Japanese, Londoners and even the Shanghai citizens travel.
A Mumbaikar has a burden. He has to subsidize all those ticket-less travelers in Bihar and UP. He has probably financed part of the swanky underground metro in Delhi. Because he is the murga.
A typical commuter in Mumbai can be profiled easily. Generally less than 50 years else he will not be able to withstand the rigours of daily traveling. Slim and nimble on his feet so he can take part in the daily stampede getting on and off the train. Fastidiously clean to keep all sorts of diseases away. He has the ability to switch off his brain at will. It helps to protect oneself from the plethora of sights and smells which assaults his senses everyday. He is deeply religious because he needs God on his side to take him safely through the day. He carries a black bag slung across his shoulder which leaves both his hands free. In the monsoon he carries a small umbrella which fits snugly in his bag.
There is no pleasure traveling in locals. As a matter of fact train commuters look at those who have managed to get out of the daily commuting with lot of envy. He is trapped in a lifestyle where he has to risk his life and limb everyday. Rains, floods, derailment, deadly stones aimed at him from the slums, bombs …anything can trip him in his daily journey. He lives in the war-zone and there is no easy escape from this.
It was disgusting to see the VIPs who visited the hospitals to pay their lip-service. When they said ‘we salute you and your Mumbaikar spirit’ I felt like giving them a sound whack on their backside. Have these guys ever traveled in the local trains? Who are these jokers surrounded by a horde of security guards who come to see the plight of a traveler in the hospital?
Who is paying the salary for their security guards and their swanky cars? It’s us! Despite paying taxes we have to go through the grind everyday and these guys live in luxury. To them we have only one message – you please fight the terrorists yourself. If you cannot, then privatize the railways and out-source the security to more able agencies.
We don’t need your noble words and the hypocritic faces. Just give us a comfortable train so we can carry on our jobs. Give us a less crowded and faster train with AC. We don’t need the windows because there is nothing worthwhile to see outside and it will save us the foul smells. We don’t need other people’s miseries to encroach into our mind and space. Please keep the slums, beggars, drug addicts and those living on the life’s edge away from us.
At least don’t treat us like cattle. We would prefer to have beautiful people, beautiful sceneries and luxurious upholstery around. If that is not possible at least give us a workmanlike train. After all we are paying for it!
Mumbaikars don’t like to talk very much about their local trains to outsiders because it is our private shame.
When I asked Kuki, my neighbour’s daughter, her opinion, she was dismissive about the whole thing. Just a tamashaa.
"Let him travel everyday by train like we do. Commuting for one day doesn’t mean anything."
It reminded me of my days in the train. And a piece I wrote after a bomb-attack. I was quite bitter about the sympathy Mumbaikars got from the rest of the country. Mainly because only regular commuters understand the plight of a fellow-commuter. Any way here’s what I wrote in July 2006.
In the Warzone
Four years back I decided to try my hand for a shore job. So, after signing off from the ship I joined the teaching faculty and started teaching at Naval Maritime Academy. I used to travel by local from Nerul to VT. A distance of 54 kms took one hour to cover. This was the first time in my life I was commuting daily by trains. I had graduated, so to say, to become a true Mumbaikar depending on the local trains for my bread and butter.
Those days the Harbour line was not at all crowded as compared to the Western and Central line. I had with me a first class season pass. The crowd in the first class were the office going type and, in the non-peak hours there was enough space to put up our feet on the opposite seats and stretch out comfortably.
My day was a fixed routine and my life revolved around the 06:58 local. From home to the station was a 7-minute walk. Some days if I was running late I hopped in an auto for a quick ride. So….. 06:50 leave home, 06:58 catch the local, 08:01 reach VT. The 1 hour in the train was meant to prepare my lectures and plan out the rest of the day.
On reaching VT I used to cross the subway at a brisk pace and catch the Academy bus leaving at 08:10. The bus zoomed through Cuffe Parade and Colaba where we could see some of the eminent residents returning from the morning work-outs. It was still quite early in the day for the office crowd to throng the roads. At 08:25 I would reach the Academy, grab a cup of tea, before rushing for the first lecture starting at 08:30. The return trip was flexible and depending on the classes could be as early as 01:30 PM. I had lot of time for myself unlike a typical 9 to 5 job.
I came to recognize most of the regulars on the train in that one year. We had a strange camaraderie. I do not remember ever speaking to anyone of them. We used to acknowledge each other by the merest of the smiles and mostly it was by the softening of our facial features. Generally Mumbai local train commuters wear a grim face.
Today I hardly travel by the trains. But I do not miss them. The crowds have become unbearable and the conditions have deteriorated. Back then there was no need to fight for a seat. The rains are more severe today and tracks are flooded very easily. Life in the local trains has become bad. For a second class commuter it is even worse.
When the Western line suffered the serial blasts I felt an immense sadness. As such the commuter has a lot of hardships. He is totally dependent on the smooth running of the train. A slight delay or problem on the way throws his life out of gear. The trains are his lifeline.
There is really no other way to travel for those who stay far from their workplace.
Buses take too long, and the bad roads make long-distance commuting impossible. Similarly daily commuting by car is not practical, even if one could afford the high cost. Day in and day out you have to live through this mindless existence. Nothing can replace the local train – crowds, ramshackle coaches and miserable views notwithstanding. In terms of time taken and cost of traveling.
I don’t think Mumbaikars were back on the trains so soon after the blast because they can ‘bounce back’. Despite the fear of life and limbs and the sadness for the fellow commuters who died or lay injured, they willed their hearts to step into the boxcar. For what other options did they have?
I don’t know why the terrorists chose to plant the bombs in the trains. I don’t think the bombs could keep the crowd away for more than 24 hours. Perhaps a more dangerous deterrent would had been poisonous chemicals. After all that sound and fury of a bomb-blast only 200 people died.
Once I tried to count the number of people in a jam-packed coach. Four to a bench x 64 benches = 256. Plus 100 standees. 350 to a coach x 9 coaches x 150 trains x 3 routes! One and a half million! Do our locals carry so many every day? Three crore rupees generated everyday by sale of tickets! Is anybody auditing these figures? Where is the money going? Why is this not getting translated to a better deal for the commuters? Why do we have to travel in such inhuman conditions?
Look around yourself in a second class. Only common people travel in these coaches regularly. They don’t have the time and the inclination to protest. Most of them wear a glazed expression on their faces. But they all have a dream. An eternal hope in their hearts that one day a new line will be miraculously laid and super-fast trains will glide smoothly over it, and take them to their destinations in luxury. Like the ones on which Japanese, Londoners and even the Shanghai citizens travel.
A Mumbaikar has a burden. He has to subsidize all those ticket-less travelers in Bihar and UP. He has probably financed part of the swanky underground metro in Delhi. Because he is the murga.
A typical commuter in Mumbai can be profiled easily. Generally less than 50 years else he will not be able to withstand the rigours of daily traveling. Slim and nimble on his feet so he can take part in the daily stampede getting on and off the train. Fastidiously clean to keep all sorts of diseases away. He has the ability to switch off his brain at will. It helps to protect oneself from the plethora of sights and smells which assaults his senses everyday. He is deeply religious because he needs God on his side to take him safely through the day. He carries a black bag slung across his shoulder which leaves both his hands free. In the monsoon he carries a small umbrella which fits snugly in his bag.
There is no pleasure traveling in locals. As a matter of fact train commuters look at those who have managed to get out of the daily commuting with lot of envy. He is trapped in a lifestyle where he has to risk his life and limb everyday. Rains, floods, derailment, deadly stones aimed at him from the slums, bombs …anything can trip him in his daily journey. He lives in the war-zone and there is no easy escape from this.
It was disgusting to see the VIPs who visited the hospitals to pay their lip-service. When they said ‘we salute you and your Mumbaikar spirit’ I felt like giving them a sound whack on their backside. Have these guys ever traveled in the local trains? Who are these jokers surrounded by a horde of security guards who come to see the plight of a traveler in the hospital?
Who is paying the salary for their security guards and their swanky cars? It’s us! Despite paying taxes we have to go through the grind everyday and these guys live in luxury. To them we have only one message – you please fight the terrorists yourself. If you cannot, then privatize the railways and out-source the security to more able agencies.
We don’t need your noble words and the hypocritic faces. Just give us a comfortable train so we can carry on our jobs. Give us a less crowded and faster train with AC. We don’t need the windows because there is nothing worthwhile to see outside and it will save us the foul smells. We don’t need other people’s miseries to encroach into our mind and space. Please keep the slums, beggars, drug addicts and those living on the life’s edge away from us.
At least don’t treat us like cattle. We would prefer to have beautiful people, beautiful sceneries and luxurious upholstery around. If that is not possible at least give us a workmanlike train. After all we are paying for it!
Mumbaikars don’t like to talk very much about their local trains to outsiders because it is our private shame.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
3 Lessons
I counted sixteen Admirals, retired and serving, in the audience that had filled the auditorium. They had all come at the annual seminar of the Indian Maritime Foundation (IMF) including a retired Air Chief and a serving Lt General.
The most remarkable person I met in the gathering was Geeta Vir, wife of the chairman of IMF. This 75 year old lady had spent more than 50 years married to the Navy first and then the merchant navy. She stood by her husband in the Navy. Later when he became a Master in commercial shipping she sailed with him for ten years. She had a lot of anecdotes to tell of her experience at sea. Like crossing the Pacific in a storm, entering far-flung ports, dealing with various situations that only a mariner faces. Right now she was running around organizing the whole show. She had the energy and alertness that would put people half her age to shame.
Though it was ten years since I left the Navy I knew most of the senior officers present there. This was an impressive attendance. I felt a little nervous to face the audience and speak on my subject – Electronic Charts.
In my younger days I had known many of these admirals as high and mighty personalities. Whatever they spoke was taken as pearls of wisdom. On this day too they were hogging the mike. Each of them giving their considered opinion. Except that they seemed out of sorts and quite out of touch with the ground reality. Mostly they were harping on their past glories..
“When I was commanding this (or heading that) etc. etc…..”
It was disappointing to see the once powerful men reduced to such a stature.
My paper was well received. Both the contents and delivery were appreciated. At tea-time many came over to congratulate and talk about the subject. I realized my previous naval rank didn’t matter. Just having the knowledge mattered.
Are there any lessons here? I have listed out three.
Lesson 1.
Stick to your strengths and prepare like hell. If you hone your knowledge continuously and remain abreast with the latest developments in your field you cannot go wrong.
Lesson 2.
Appointments and positions may all go away with time. Ultimately it is your personal skills that carry the day. Knowledge, power of communication, pleasant demeanor, physical fitness, mental alertness and such qualities will always stand by you.
Lesson 3.
Professional life is one aspect. Family and social life is another. You have to have a balance, so that one doesn’t suffer because of the other. Imagine the plight of a career-obsessed person who has neglected his family to reach the top. After he retires, which he must, he finds he doesn’t have either family or career.
These lessons are nothing new. We come across them in different forms at different times in our life. Once in a while they have to be re-affirmed.
As they say – “Live Your Values”.
The most remarkable person I met in the gathering was Geeta Vir, wife of the chairman of IMF. This 75 year old lady had spent more than 50 years married to the Navy first and then the merchant navy. She stood by her husband in the Navy. Later when he became a Master in commercial shipping she sailed with him for ten years. She had a lot of anecdotes to tell of her experience at sea. Like crossing the Pacific in a storm, entering far-flung ports, dealing with various situations that only a mariner faces. Right now she was running around organizing the whole show. She had the energy and alertness that would put people half her age to shame.
Though it was ten years since I left the Navy I knew most of the senior officers present there. This was an impressive attendance. I felt a little nervous to face the audience and speak on my subject – Electronic Charts.
In my younger days I had known many of these admirals as high and mighty personalities. Whatever they spoke was taken as pearls of wisdom. On this day too they were hogging the mike. Each of them giving their considered opinion. Except that they seemed out of sorts and quite out of touch with the ground reality. Mostly they were harping on their past glories..
“When I was commanding this (or heading that) etc. etc…..”
It was disappointing to see the once powerful men reduced to such a stature.
My paper was well received. Both the contents and delivery were appreciated. At tea-time many came over to congratulate and talk about the subject. I realized my previous naval rank didn’t matter. Just having the knowledge mattered.
Are there any lessons here? I have listed out three.
Lesson 1.
Stick to your strengths and prepare like hell. If you hone your knowledge continuously and remain abreast with the latest developments in your field you cannot go wrong.
Lesson 2.
Appointments and positions may all go away with time. Ultimately it is your personal skills that carry the day. Knowledge, power of communication, pleasant demeanor, physical fitness, mental alertness and such qualities will always stand by you.
Lesson 3.
Professional life is one aspect. Family and social life is another. You have to have a balance, so that one doesn’t suffer because of the other. Imagine the plight of a career-obsessed person who has neglected his family to reach the top. After he retires, which he must, he finds he doesn’t have either family or career.
These lessons are nothing new. We come across them in different forms at different times in our life. Once in a while they have to be re-affirmed.
As they say – “Live Your Values”.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Loneliness of a Mariner
In my younger days, when I was in the Navy, I tried to behave as a gallant officer should. I was always on the lookout for rendering chivalrous services, especially for a hapless damsel or for pretty young things.
Consider this passage:
“..what is a gentleman ? I’ll answer it now: a Royal Naval officer is, in a general sort of way, though, of course, there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide sea and the breath of God’s winds that washes their hearts and blows the bitterness out of their minds and makes them what men ought to be.”
It was written by H. Rider Haggard in King Solomon’s Mines in 1886! He had beautifully captured the underlying character of a navy man a hundred and twenty five years back.
The other day my wife, Sumita beckoned me to the computer.
“Have a look at this.”
I was in for a pleasant surprise. Ryan Skinner, a media fellow whom I had met at Norway had some handsome comments on my writing. He called my blog ‘limpid’. After chatting with me he had deduced that many mariners wrote well because they were lonely at sea.
Ryan had helpfully depicted a serene picture of an anchorage showing a number of vessels in the background. All of them uniformly facing towards the port. The focus was on a lone cargo ship forlornly waiting under the grey skies.
I could imagine there was a lonely second mate doing his 12 to 4 watch on the bridge. We have a private joke amongst Indian watchkeepers. It goes like this –
Who do you generally find moving around in the night?
A Whore, Chôr and 12 to 4.
Chôr, which rhymes with whore, means a thief in Hindi.
Basically it is a mild dig on the second mate who does a 12 to 4 watch for his entire tenure of 6 to 9 months in the ship.
I remember when our ship entered the port I would explore the new place. It was best done jogging on my two feet. It used to give me a lot of pleasure to watch the citizens going about their daily work. I would look at the parents escorting their children to the school. Or a housewife engrossed in buying vegetables, carefully choosing the freshest of the lot which would go on their dinner table later in the day.
I would pass through quiet residential areas, looking safe and secure, and wonder about the people who lived there.
Was I lonely? Yes. Actually I used to consider myself more in the mould of “loneliness of a long-distance runner”. And transformed into a lonely mariner at sea.
Consider this passage:
“..what is a gentleman ? I’ll answer it now: a Royal Naval officer is, in a general sort of way, though, of course, there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide sea and the breath of God’s winds that washes their hearts and blows the bitterness out of their minds and makes them what men ought to be.”
It was written by H. Rider Haggard in King Solomon’s Mines in 1886! He had beautifully captured the underlying character of a navy man a hundred and twenty five years back.
The other day my wife, Sumita beckoned me to the computer.
“Have a look at this.”
I was in for a pleasant surprise. Ryan Skinner, a media fellow whom I had met at Norway had some handsome comments on my writing. He called my blog ‘limpid’. After chatting with me he had deduced that many mariners wrote well because they were lonely at sea.
Ryan had helpfully depicted a serene picture of an anchorage showing a number of vessels in the background. All of them uniformly facing towards the port. The focus was on a lone cargo ship forlornly waiting under the grey skies.
I could imagine there was a lonely second mate doing his 12 to 4 watch on the bridge. We have a private joke amongst Indian watchkeepers. It goes like this –
Who do you generally find moving around in the night?
A Whore, Chôr and 12 to 4.
Chôr, which rhymes with whore, means a thief in Hindi.
Basically it is a mild dig on the second mate who does a 12 to 4 watch for his entire tenure of 6 to 9 months in the ship.
I remember when our ship entered the port I would explore the new place. It was best done jogging on my two feet. It used to give me a lot of pleasure to watch the citizens going about their daily work. I would look at the parents escorting their children to the school. Or a housewife engrossed in buying vegetables, carefully choosing the freshest of the lot which would go on their dinner table later in the day.
I would pass through quiet residential areas, looking safe and secure, and wonder about the people who lived there.
Was I lonely? Yes. Actually I used to consider myself more in the mould of “loneliness of a long-distance runner”. And transformed into a lonely mariner at sea.
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