Blue Fish: The War Beneath (4 page)

In the control room, Sharma ordered the Diving officer and Steering operator to make port 20
0
with full speed ahead. ’S21’ bent at a steep angle and tilted on her side. This naturally made the task of torpedo loading difficult as we were barely able to hold ourselves straight up. One of the crew was severely injured while pulling the chain to load the torpedo. We had to make him step aside as he was bleeding profusely.

The two enemy torpedoes again narrowly missed us. Either it was luck or it was sheer planning of Sharma that we were missed by enemy targets. Our torpedo was still in the enemy’s range. We waited awhile for the sound of impact. A minute passed by and nothing. We realized that our torpedo also missed the target. Count was equalized, and we felt a strange calm.

We lost contact with the enemy submarine, I guessed even they had shut their engines off. As a result of this, it usually becomes difficult for a sonar operator to detect the enemy.

I went up to Ramana "Keep looking, they should be nearby," I said."Sir, they are just above us," he said.

The crew looked up, and tried to sense the enemy on top of our boat.

"Match course, make slow port movement. We will rise up and from there we will get into position to fire," Sharma said.

"Yes Sir," I said "Ramana, What's their depth?"

"Depth 150 meters Sir," Ramana said.

"Match the depth." In a few seconds, we were rising up.

"We need to fire 3 torpedoes at a go," Sharma said.

"Sir! Enemy in range 100 meters," Ramana said.

"Program Torpedo 2 at a distance 100 meters with a speed of 8 knots; Torpedo 3 at a distance 120 meters with a speed 8 knots and Torpedo 4 - distance 130 meters, 10 knots."

Taan Singh quickly confirmed their programming. Sharma pressed the button of first torpedo and it was fired. He then changed the switch and pressed the button again; the second torpedo was also fired. Mr. Sharma seemed sufficed with two torpedoes and I thought he must have saved the third one for later.

We all knew that this was it; this time we were not going to miss our target. I was looking at Kamal, he was fully aware that he was going to be questioned about how he could allow war being the political officer.

Our enemy was not silent on the other hand; even they fired 2 more torpedoes towards us. Sharma, knowing this changed the path of 'S21' like earlier. We were sure that the enemy torpedo will not hit us under Sharma's planning.

But this time the situation worsened.

"Sir we are in the mid of underwater hills," Ramana said.

It was certainly bad news for us. "Underwater hills!! Crew - prepare to close all compartment hatches. Make emergency rise 100 meters," Sharma ordered.

Suddenly, we heard a huge blast.

"We destroyed our enemy Sir." Ramana reported proudly.

There was a clear sense of pride among all of us. We could figure out that the enemy was destroyed. But they were still behind us. It was still pursuing 'S21' and we were still at peril.

Sharma ordered for us to go full speed ahead, 'S21' thus recorded a quick ascent in its trajectory. As a result, the enemy’s torpedo was blasted just a few inches away.

Prathap, Kamal, Taan Singh and I were in the first compartment. We were neither rejoicing nor were we scared about the aftermath of this mission.

It was all over, for a moment I thought, but I was wrong. We were still in the midst of the hills. Before Sharma or Mann Vijay Singh or Ramana could figure it out, 'S21' hit a giant underwater hill. It had a tremendous impact. I quickly went to the hatch of the first compartment, looked at Sharma and other officers were falling down in the third compartment - I fastened the hatch.

'S21' lost its momentum and was sliding down the underwater hill at a high speed.

The four of us were holding on tightly to the walls of the compartment. It struck me that we were in an enormous amount of danger, because of the catastrophic damage to ‘S21’ amidst underwater hills. The worst part was that there was no amount of human effort that could’ve saved us.

We had experienced a great fall. Accidents take mere seconds to occur, but their impacts last forever. We still didn’t know the impact of this fall.

'S21' came to a standstill. We knew that we were stuck.

I looked up, and a strange silence enveloped us.

I rushed towards the hatch to open it. I tried to turn the latch, but it wouldn’t turn. It was stuck because there was apparently an airlock in the compartment.

Water finally found its way into our submarine and not quietly. It was terrifying. When Nature’s agitated, there won’t be much for us humans to do about it. So even we couldn’t do much about it. The water was gushing in from every place possible, and all our efforts to open the hatch were in vain. All the electric circuits slowly started to dilapidate and that snatched away the light in the compartment. Within minutes, we were scared for our lives and for the rest of the crew.

"Try to contact the control room," Kamal shouted.

"Yes Sir," Prathap said and he went to the intercom. He tried to contact the control room, he repeatedly tried contacting the control room but to no avail.

"It seems like water has filled up the other compartments," Kamal said, worried.

"Sir, I don't think anybody is alive out there," Prathap despaired.

"There should be somebody alive in other compartments," I was hopeful.

"What shall we do?" Prathap said.

"It's too late to do anything now. Had anybody taken my advice seriously, we wouldn't have been in this situation. Darn it!" Kamal said.

"Had we chosen to follow your initial advice, then the enemy would have attacked the Vishakhapatnam port and hundreds of fisher men would have been dead by now," I said.

"There would have been forces stopping the enemy from attacking us."

"Like?"

"It's up to the government to think about it. Why should we be here? We had orders of being in Passive mode - not to attack but to locate the enemy activity and report it. But we chose to be on active mode. We never had the authority to attack."

"I don't know about the authorities but I am proud that we have destroyed our enemy submarine."

"And this is the outcome. We are trapped and not sure if anybody is alive in other compartments."

"At least we have destroyed our enemy," I raised my voice.

"Nobody will speak about it. This act will never get acknowledged by higher authorities. The attack you are proud of will never make it into the books of Indian history."

"Sir we should do something now before it's too late," said Prathap.

"The only way is to wait for a search party," I said.

"It will be too late for us to survive. By then we will run out of oxygen in the compartment," Kamal said in an exasperated way.

Kamal had a plan to escape. His idea was to get into the torpedo tubes and escape through it. I said no to it. If we did so, then the possibilities of rescuing any survivors were low. Even this compartment will be filled with water. I did not want to take any chances on this. I felt that we shouldn't be thinking about our lives, but the plan should be to look for any survivors in 'S21'.

"I will stay here and will try to check if anybody is alive out there. Do you want to leave and go? Then you all can escape through the torpedo tubes. I will pull this lever and you all can escape one by one," I said.

"You want to stay here – for how long? Or search for survivors for how long?" Kamal said.

"I don't know."

Everybody was visibly angry with me. We had a chance to escape but I chose to instead stay in there and search for other survivors. I walked to the side and sat on top of one of the torpedoes.

Prathap got angry, he rushed towards the intercom and tried to reach the other compartment but silence was the answer again because intercom needed electricity to function. So Prathap tried his luck with the telephone, but to no avail.

Taan Singh smiled, which cheered the rest of us up as well. We were all resting and were waiting for a miracle that would get us out of this rut.

And suddenly, the lights completely shut down. It was pitch dark and only our breathing could be heard. Taan Singh grabbed a torch.

"Looks like we are all very tired," I said.

"How I wish we could sleep for some time,” Prathap murmured like a tired child.

"You can get some sleep, if you want."

"Sir, are you sure that our accomplishment will never be acknowledged?"

"Prathap, let’s not talk about this now.”

"I just want to get out of here," Kamal despaired.

We were all trying to divert our minds and were hoping to see a ray of hope.

"How did you end up in the Navy, Prathap?" I said.

"Nothing special, Sir. I was searching in dailies for employment and found this Navy Ad highlighted in big words ‘SERVE THE NATION’ and here I am."

"What about you Taan Singh?"

"Sir, my father served in Army, and I applied to the Navy," Taan Singh said.

"I don’t see the link Taan Singh – what has your father being in army got to do with you getting into Navy?

“It’s a long story. I used to make a lot of paper boats in my children. My father noticed my love for water, and I ended up here. But my son is in Army training school.”

"How old is he?"

"I am not sure Sir, I never asked him."

"Do you miss him?" came an inquiry.

"No Sir, my duty never gave me any time to miss my family" was an affirmative response from Taan Singh.

"This is our 18th day inside. Now we get the time to talk about this. I wish someone in the other compartments are talking like this too.”

"And I hope they don't forget where they are...," Kamal said in a disapproving tone.

There was a sudden movement acted upon all of us. Our compartment shook a bit. This was apparently because of 'S21' getting buried into the seabed.

Torch light on the walk path rolled and all of sudden, our compartment shuddered.

"Hold tightly," I yelled out.

Because of the impact one of the pipes burst, and this led to water flushing into our compartment.

"Fix the pipe," I shouted.

"We don't have the fixing tool. We need to get that from the other compartment," Taan Singh said.

"But, where is the pipe's vault?"

"It's behind that hatch, in the second compartment Sir."

The water level was quickly rising up.

"We need to escape from here and this is my final order," Kamal said. It was funny to receive ‘orders’ when each person’s designations were light years away and we were naked humans struggling in the battle stuck between life & death.

"Let's try one last time. The compartment hatch should open now. The pressure might have changed," I said.

I balanced myself and quickly went to the hatch to give it one last shot. Prathap also stepped in and we opened the hatch with great difficulty.

And that led us into the second compartment.

I quickly closed the vault and the gust of water raged against the closed vault on the other side. I could feel its rage ready to eat us alive. Silence prevailed. I saw Ramana collapse; I went to him, picked him up and placed him flat on the dining table. It’s tragic that the dining table was now a life bearer. It once helped the doctor treat the crew. It now bore a collapsed person. It had been a surgery bed in an operation theatre. He was alive but was unconscious. He had severe injuries on his head. On seeing Ramana alive, it gave me hope that there might be other officers and crew alive in the other compartments too.

Ramana opened his eyes; he looked joyful to see us alive.

"Don't worry, you will be fine." I assured him with a hopefully.

I went up to Kamal; he was inspecting the sonar log form and wave sheet. He also looked up at the notes written by Ramana.

"We are stuck in the hill. It will be difficult for the rescue team to find us," he said.

"What shall we do now?" Prathap asked

"We are nearly 500 meters deep. We need protective life suit gear to swim up or else we wouldn’t survive. It will take us at least 4-5 minutes to get to the water surface and to do that holding our breath is one task in itself.”

Prathap inspected the second compartment for any life suits, but couldn’t find any.

It was normal practice for everybody onboard to keep their respective life suits with them, but the crew considering this to be training, hadn’t bothered.

We all were still searching for the life suits, but Prathap gave up on his pursuit. He trudged towards the sonar room, picked up a pen and paper, and began writing something which I noticed.

"I got married quite recently, and I promised my wife that I would write a letter whenever I could," he said with a grief stricken face.

It dawned on us that we weren’t going to get out of this alive. Taan Singh found a couple of torches and turned them on. The compartment suddenly lit up.

Kamal too was unable to find any life suits.

"There are no life suits here!" he said.

"I think, they should be in fourth Compartment under the emergency gear," I said.

"Why aren’t they placed here?"

"I don't know Sir."

"Now we need to go to the fourth compartment!"

"Let's open the third Compartment hatch and make our way into the other compartments. First let’s look for survivors," I said.

"No Sir. It's not a good idea," Prathap said.

"What do you mean by ‘not a good idea’?"

"We are safe here and we know that nobody is alive there in the control room and it will be very risky for all of us."

"Why do you say that it is risky? Haven’t we all signed up for this? If that’s the case, it won’t be right on our part to leave them here, and find our way back like cowards."

"We can help the trapped officers by bringing in the rescue teams and for that we should first escape through the torpedo tubes."

"You are acting like a coward." I walked towards the hatch to open it.

Nobody was interested in supporting me. They were all standing at their places. I guess everybody was scared of lying there in insipidity and welcoming death.

"I agree with Prathap. If you open that hatch Arjun, even this compartment will be filled with water and there will be no scope for us to escape," Kamal said.

I looked up at Kamal; I was not expecting such callous behavior from a responsible political bureaucrat like Kamal.

"If you all are worried about your lives, then get yourself into the first compartment and close the hatch safely and remain safe in there. I will be doing this. We have to protect the remaining crew and if you all are feeling scared then I will alone go ahead with it," I declared.

I looked back at Prathap and Taan Singh. Prathap remained silent but Taan sing stepped forward saying "Sir, I am with you."

I knew that whatever I was doing was right, so I just went ahead with my plan. I stood in front of the hatch and as I was just about to open it, Prathap pulled me back. It made me angry. I forced myself not to hit him. But Prathap was adamant in stopping me to open up the hatch. I had no other option but to hit him and push him back.

Kamal and Taan Singh interfered to stop the fight. They both held Prathap and the fight was stopped midway. I had no intention of punishing Prathap for his foolish behaviour. I realized that it was his fear that was forcing him to do so.

I still went ahead with my plan; I went to the hatch to open it.

Before I could open it, suddenly there was a big explosion in the other compartments; we were all thrown back. None of us could figure out the cause behind the explosion. There was a loud sound and the resultant quivers in the compartment threw us up in the air. We found ourselves from a distance of 3 to 4 feet from the hatch.

Water was flushing from the broken pipes continuously. It was not possible for any of us to stop it. In fact, we were unable to hold ourselves straight against the incoming gush of water. The hatch of the third compartment blew open as the water from the third compartment flooded into the second compartment and subsequently into the first.

"Get back - Let's close the first compartment hatch before it breaks loose and drowns us," Kamal said.

It became increasingly difficult for all of us to stand in the gush of water. I tried to attend to Ramana who was lying dormant on that dining table, but was unable to get any closer to him. I pushed myself harder towards him and as I was about to get to him, a metal box hit me on my head and that made me lose consciousness for a second. Bells of our struggle rang loud enough in my brains so that I hung there in resolve to get myself through this. Vision inside the compartment was distorted. Even the intensity of our voices dropped and this I learnt when I couldn’t hear anything being said by Kamal.