Sunday Snippets
By Venkatesh Raghavan
I recall the evening when I was faced with a really tough situation soon after I had completed attending the mock amphibious exercises staged somewhere off the Goa coast by our defence forces. Recalling a historical perspective was the then chief of naval staff, Vishnu Bhagwat, who informed us that the first amphibious exercises were carried out in Normandy by the allied forces against the Germans.
Having witnessed the amphibious exercises from on board an aircraft carrier ship that was too close to 4 a.m. in the morning, it was much later in the afternoon hours that I managed to file my copy to The Free Press Journal. The exercises were about the usage of naval ships and air power to target a mock enemy on a hostile stretch of a beach or shore. The signalling that took place from the naval ship and the deafening sound of the aircraft taking off from our deck (despite having stuffed our ears with cotton) was quite an experience.
Early afternoon was a bit relaxed as we were treated to glasses of beer before lunch being served in our hotel premises. After a brief siesta it was time for us to queue up and file our copies. Email was not commonly used in those days, though it had arrived on the scene. Most of our press offices were still using the fax machines to convey messages from outstation destinations.
Waking up early in the morning and being on board a naval ship even before the wee hours and holding fort till early evening hours to file my copy was a bit hectic for me.However, the real challenge I faced came after I filed my copy through the fax machine that was made available to us reporters.
Now it was my job to alert the staff in Mumbai to use my defence copy in a timely manner. I tried hard to contact my chief reporter Raju Vernekar over the telephone. It came to naught as there was no one who passed on the message and I was stuck with no response from the Mumbai-end. It was a good three to four attempts including an attempt to get our editor (late) Janardhan Thakur directly on the line before I managed to contact Raju Vernekar. Raju was receptive and he soon assured me that his team had received the fax message and the story was as good as filed.
However, it was only early morning the next day as our Navy bus was nearing Navi Mumbai I was able to heave a sigh of relief. The navy chief patted me on the back, stating, “You have filed a good story. It’s a clean copy.” As our bus took off from its brief halt at Navi Mumbai over breakfast, I felt elated about the round of appreciation I received from the naval chief and chose to open a bottle of beer from those stacked in our bus. It was an early morning celebration with other journalists watching my appetite as a guzzler. However, that was the last occasion I could interact with Bhagwat as chief of naval staff. The then defence minister George Fernandes unceremoniously sacked the naval chief. Rest is history.
