Long 'C' - At Last

After a delay of over a year, my Long ‘C’ (Communication specialization) course started in September 1967. There were 10 of us including a Malaysian, Mohd. Bin-Shariff who was appropriately called ‘Sheriff’. Along with me he was a bachelor, the rest all married. But the wives of Viji Malhotra and GBS (affectionately called Garbar Singh) Kohli stayed back with their parents for the first half of the year-long course as Viji’s wife, Rita, was expecting their first child and Mrs Kohli decided to leave GBS alone so as not to interfere with his studies! So Viji and GBS stayed with Sheriff and me in the Single Officers’ cabins of Venduruthy Mess.

Cdr Subimal Mookerjee was the Oi/c Signal School with Lt Cdr AK Sood as our course officer. Strangely enough, Sood didn’t like being called by his first name Arvind and was proud to be called and indeed introduced himself with a smooth smile as ‘Crook’ Sood. His designation in the School was V1 and he taught us Fleetwork. Lt RK (Rocky) Mehta took care of Wireless Organisation as W1 with Lt JK (Jack) Suri, later a victim of the ’71 War, in charge of Technical aspects as T1. GBS, who was from the Education branch as against the rest of us from the Executive, was already teaching Radio Theory (RT) in School as M1 prior to the Course, now wore two hats. He would sit as a student with us for most part of the Course but would take over the mantle of a teacher for RT classes. He was, of course, exempted from the final exams from the RT paper!

On the practical side, we had to learn semaphore, morse code and typing. Typing was taught with Pitman’s lessons accompanied by music reminiscent of alphabet learning in kindergarten classes. Many did not take typing seriously which would earn the Oi/c’s wrath later.

The four ‘bachelors’ got along famously with each other. After school, our usual routine was to study till about 9 pm and then adjourn to the nearby US Club for a drink and the then famous ‘club plate’ or ‘club sandwich’. Sheriff was a livewire and would often urge all in the bar to have a drink with “When Sheriff drinks, everyone drinks; drinks all around.” After a few, it was “When Sheriff pays, everyone pays” followed by Sheriff’s quick departure and the barman chasing all present for signatures!

In the heat and humidity of Cochin, classes would often get boring. Smoking was allowed and being occasional smokers, Viji and I would sometimes light a fag. On one occasion, we were sitting behind GBS when Viji could not resist the temptation of seeing what would happen if he touched the lighted end of his cigarette with GBS’s hair flowing out of the back of his turban. To our horror, we watched helplessly as the hair started burning. GBS felt the heat and swiped the hair with his hand fully absorbed in the lecture. Fortunately, the small fire subsided immediately and GBS continued to pay attention to the lecturer without realizing what had happened. I absolutely forbade Viji from telling GBS about the incident and the latter never came to know of it. Alas, he is no more and will not get to read this either.

Viji had a brain ticking (maybe still has!) all the time. One day in his cabin I found him taking out a bottle of scotch from the cupboard and examining it. He declared that his bearer had been swigging whisky on the sly and had diluted it with water to maintain the level. He told me that he had been suspecting it for sometime and to catch the culprit he had put a hair on the inside of the bottle top before tightening it. The hair was missing so obviously the bottle had been opened and nobody but the bearer had an access to the cupboard.

During our course, a couple of Malaysian ships visited Cochin. Sheriff took us on board for a drink and I was attracted by a music system I saw in the Wardroom. Sheriff told me that Crook Sood had approached the Malaysians to sell it to him. I requested Sheriff that if they really wanted to offload the system, could he get them to give it to me instead? He succeeded in doing that and I was the happy owner of the wonderful system for many years. I also bought from them a lot of LPs including the James Bond theme composed by John Barry who became my lifelong favourite composer. Crook Sood was hurt that he had been outwitted but to his credit, took it quite sportingly.

Opposite my cabin stayed RG (Gulu) Kumar doing his Long TAS course. He too had a hi-fi music system with latest discs being brought to him by his fiancée, Reena from her trips abroad as an air hostess. So if you were passing by on the road, you could opt to hear Aretha Franklin on her way to becoming ‘Queen of Soul’ from Gulu’s side to John Barry or Tom Jones from my side.

Meanwhile, the course went on smoothly with interesting lectures on Fleetwork and Wireless Organisation. Radio Theory and Technical were rather boring and the study of the innards of communication sets with their complicated circuitry met with a fair amount of resistance from providing any high voltage current of interest in my veins! However, I managed to survive.

GBS also took some Instruction Technique classes for us. One piece of advice I recall during his lectures was that if you are asked a question the answer to which you don’t know, say “I shall come to it later” and then never come to it!

Soon it was time for final exams. Apart from written papers, we had to undergo a typewriting test with a benchmark of 30 words per minute. As the result did not formally count towards successful completion of the Course, not many took it seriously. At the test, only Viji and I topped 30 wpm. Cdr Mookerjee was livid and held back the results with daily classes for the failed candidates. They had to labour for an extra week to reach the qualifying standard thus cutting into our joining time.

Finally, the results were declared and we had qualified as Long ’Cs’ ready for our next appointment which in my case was Signal Communication Officer, INS Trishul, the senior ship of 15th Frigate Squadron.