THE JOYS OF BEING IN THE NAVY

WHAT does the Navy give you that other employers can’t or don’t?” I ask myself this question, as I stand on the bridge wings, looking out towards an endless expanse of turquoise blue waters. And then it dawns on me that the scene playing out before me is not a dream, nor a hallucination, not even a screenshot from a movie… but my workplace! I ask myself, “Do I really need a better answer than that!”

Go beyond the superficial aura of sailing the high seas and cruising crystal clear blue waters and where does one find that truth other than ground zero? So here I am again, the same bridge wing, the same setting, although the sun has traversed a little higher and visibility has become much better. So I ask myself the question once again. What is it anyway? Is it money? Is it perks? I don’t think so. Is it the prospect of charting uncharted waters? No again. So what is it?

I see the navy not as a job or a trade that needs comparison in any which way to another job or trade. The Navy is a way of life.

From the day a young fresher joins the service, till the moment he retires as an experienced ‘sea dog’, the range of values and ethics that the Navy instils in that individual, is beyond doubt and beyond compare. The evolution of just another face in the crowd into an able and competent combatant is something exclusive to this service alone. The all-round grooming of an ordinary recruit into a cultured and courteous gentleman with professional expertise to back him up is something that the run-of-the-mill job does not and cannot provide. The exigencies on the job that a naval sailor encounters, the challenges on the high seas that a naval officer confronts are far beyond the targets set by the manager of some far-off multinational company.

The pride of standing under your country’s flag, of sweating it out for your own country in an international arena, the satisfaction of investing your energies into your own soil and silt, can never come from labouring day in and day out for some distant millionaire, minting money off the acumen of pressure numbed minds of countless talented lads. The vibrant, satisfied smile on the sweat-lined face of a sailor at the end of a successful sortie, not to mention the pride and glory associated with accomplishment of a mission, cannot be matched by any pay rise that a corporate executive gets for a job well done.

In today’s world, overcast with dark clouds of instant gratification and selfish indulgences, it is upon the services to bring around the silver lining of hope. Hope—that’s someone works for achieving goals higher than the superficial checkpoints of money and perks, that someone realizes the reward for selfless service does not lie in immediate incentives but in well deserved benefits and that’s someone cares for, respects and actually does something for the country and its countrymen and that someone deserves, and very rightly so, to be a part of the blue water arm of the national tri-services—the Indian Navy.

(This article appeared in the supplementary edition, The Indian Navy, of the Indian Express on December 4, 2011)