The story

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

I want to break free [the song, by Queen]

I want to break free
I want to break free

I want to break free from your lies
You're so self satisfied I don't need you
I want to break free
God knows, God knows I want to break free


I've fallen in love
I've fallen in love for the first time
And this time I know it's for real
I've fallen in love, yeah
God knows, God knows I've fallen in love


It's strange but it's true
I can't get over the way you love me like you do
But I have to be sure
When I walk out that door
Oh how I want to be free, baby
Oh how I want to break free,
Oh how I want to break free


But life still goes on
I can't get used to, living without, living without,
Living without you by my side
I don't want to live alone, hey
God knows, got to make it on my own
So baby can't you see
God knows, gods know, gods know
I've want to break free

The cosy J- feeling

Her presence is enough to get me this feeling. Her conduct with other men around, her palship, her regular talks, her email exchanges, everything. I can notice the subtly changes happening within myself by her mere presence. And I just hate it. Coz no more I feel in control of myself. The J drives me more than my mind. And I had struggled a lot in my mind to overcome this very thing. And then it’s still happening to me and as thoug I am suffering defeat at the hands of it! Fuck it. The remedy I think is one one sure shot way….stay away..as far away as I can. She aint mine. She sometimes aint even worth me. But still she can make me feel this. I know all this and even suffer it. That’s the worst part and kind of defeat, I bogey. She may be lecherous, immoral, easy virtue, but still as though I can’t resisit her. She may have her resons, I don’t know but as though I want to know them and may blindly buy them! That’s the charm of a woman.
Staying away may not be a permanent solution. Coz it’s a natural thing also. And god’s gracious it’s still there in me. I am still a human, I m happy. Find a permanent own one is the best remedy. I am again becoming an emotional fool. I overthink..should I, should I not. That’s the sign of true infatuation..loosing away your controls, and perhaps life aint worth it until u get one such bout of this feeling. There are many more better than her.but all I see is her. There are many more ready for me. But all I want is her. The one who can least of all be mine.! That’s the L-feeling. Feels great, I am getting this. After a long while. Last was for Tanuja. I missed her. I will miss it again. Shef thing is still so much in dark, unsure. Arch never was, though she was ok. She understands me better. But something stopped me. I assented to that something. Here it is now, again.
I think she likes me too. She has changed to my likes. She speaks my words. She talks like I do. She herself walks up to me to have a word. She responds. She is eager to respond. She shares. She waits. She closes up. That’s the bitch in her. If she’s busy then why all this with me. Perhaps clever like all of us are. Keeping a steppinie. A stand-by, for emergencies. Smart, na? And here I am , ready to become a fool again.
Got to go,. Leave. As early as I can. To save ,my self from damages.

The forwarded mails

It is true that the forwarded mails lack any personal touch. But surprisingly the world still stretches beyond this. Sometimes even other’s thought have some resonance with our mindset. Then these ‘forwarded’ pieces , though composed by somebody else, become a representative of own mind too. Sometimes they pave way for something common — evoke identical thoughts — between the two people. So even with all the ‘impersonal’ thing about the forwarded mails, they serve a lot in building a relationship.
It’s much like enjoying a common movie or a song. We don’t create the song or the movie, but a together- viewing still makes us like it. We undergo the same range of emotions and thought processes; eventually the minds begin to resonate.

Singular partner’s past affair

This sensitive issue has been broaching in my mind for quite sometime. Many of my pals use this as an excuse to get me also involved in their ‘playboy fun activities’, which just doesn’t convince me, ever, to get indulged. The issue of ‘fun’, notwithstanding all the open views i have about it, (and with due respect to taboo-ic rejection of the thoughts of free love for all) a beloved's past affair is a psychological upheaval. I think there probably still exist a positive answer to handling the case of one the partners' past afair when the other is innocent.
I often think that if sociology and social psychology ever were a subject for the IIT entrance test, the JEE, then this question of handling singular partner’s past affair would have aptly judged people’s mettle. Not all people can dare to think of this situation and worse enough, try solving it in a constructive way. Self-annihilation seems to be most tempting solution. Of late I have started feeling that there still exist some good solutions to it, because life definitely has solutions of such cases. Therefore, all that the people need to do is not to get bookish and watch this world with an open mind.
To get my possible hints to the solution , I turn back to my favourite place, the movies, which deal with such topics. One of the flicks I recall is one slower one ‘Dil kya kare’ and another one, “Mrs and Mr Iyer”.

on nostalgia

Nostalgia is a cosy feeling. Thinking about good old days makes you feel good. But there is definitely a hitch with thing also. Too much of past makes the future obscure and makes the present look unhappy. You become a victim of the past where u my even stop moving ahead in life. Seldom look-backs help in checking up and realigning your future but heavy doses of nostalgia are dangerous.

Uff---arguments and debates....

Arguments and debates have jumbled my mind to ruins. They keep howling in my head all the time, leaving me rest less and loathing all jobs. I have ended up losing track of what I personally wanted in my life. Extensive debates have covertly given their own shape and design to my choices and desires.
I just miss out on what I want.
Peace is best. Keeps you focused and aimed to your goal. Avoid unessential debates

Problems in SCI work culture have noted so far:
1. There are just 4 deck officers at the most, that too when a third officer is available, to attend to deck/cargo/radio communication /navigation/safety and security job.
2. Crew has the option to use labour union tool to manipulate ship’s work anytime.
3. There are excessive crew, to manage whom it is essential to have extra officer. But unfortunately there is none. Chief officer is suppose to be resting when the day’s maintenance job is at peak!!! When would he supervise the task. And the trend has been so with SCI since inception itself.
4. Rules, times, people,--all change. Traditions don’t. Old habits die hard. They all absorb the practices of the past from their predecessors and try to continue it. The mistakes continue on forever even with all the recoded knowledge of it.
5. They all try to get on top of each other. The ‘versus’ thing is high— a legacy of the past.
6. They humbly , honestly, sincerely, willingly, submissively –believe in following. None in leading. U make the rules..they will agree to follow it.and then later sit down to criticize it, find faults and defects. ….will themselves never agree to face the problem ..head-on.
7. Mostly, all are old timers with the company….so it’s more of a family affair with them now…nothing professional.!!
8. Age is the sign of good knowledge…not the index of need to unlearn and new-learn.!
9. Mostly they all have grown up in some atmosphere..right /wrong; good/bad; -whatever it is. They scathe it, hate it, despise it..but have subconsciously learned to live with it. So when it’s time to executing a new rule, the old habits come into play.

A letter that never sailed out...

TO : SCI
CC: ALL SCI SHIPS


Dear Sir,
Apropos the recent increment of officers' salaries by the company's management, i want to make it clear that i would still opt for the relief instead of the raise. As it is, i am comtemplating intervention of external agencies to obtain the same after completion of the article time by august end.
I would also like to suggest that the company should come out with some alternate scheme to ensure signing off after 4 months during this intervening period of shortage. Infact a faction of officers might even agree to have their one month, or so, salary be retained back by the company in return for a guaranted sign off. That salary, along with some emolument, could be released immediately upon joining of the officer on the next vessel, say, within some stipulated period. In the otherwise case it could be like some propotionate retributive measure for violation of ad hoc agreement. (legal complexities have not been weighed, though apparently not infeasible idea).
The above hinges on the fact the basic atricle period as per the present INSA-MUI agreement is still 7 months on tankers. But the popular demand is that of 4-6 months only. So any demand for less than stipulated time should be seen as breach of contract. Also that, the SCI has never done a hot pursuit of its trained professional who are poached away by high payers, on whom the SCI invests so much on training. While a hot pursuit could never be a good, humane thing, a slightly moulded way could be adopted to resolve it's own crisis of professionals.
It must be noted by all the concerned people that the basic crisis we are fighting for is that of untimely relief and not of salary hike?! or are we? but a good, or may be even a more popular, faction amogst the officers is concentrating and also successfully translating the whole issue of poor relief into an under- payment fight more by agreeing to any kind of Prolonged service allowance or suchlike. Is our aim not getting deviated. Did 2nd officer of Desh Vaibhav, celebrating an NRI status, and still a rich man by many a standrads of an average Indian's income die for so petty a cause as money???! or was it relief??
The government and the company management both remain responsible to avert more such actions, a retributive measure of minor degree should be affirmatively considered to get to the solutions straight. There are a number of reasons why people still return to SCI even after knowing all it's problems. Some want promotion and some social security,some want sea time and some aim for shore jobs at an early age.As Mr A Mishra from MT DS Thapa puts it, the increment is 'peanuts' ( too much of this 'Peanut' thing btw), get it outright that 'that' dream salary of foreign flags enticing enough to block the exodus is not going to happen until the present state-of-affairs in India. Ukrainins are flying the Indian's planes. Under employment, crew count and catering staff in SCI is nearly same. Nothing signals of any prosperity justifying our demands, may be except for that 'shopping spree' by the SCI. NUSI/FSUI has it's own demand of salary hike.Strength of unity cannot bring dead to life. To fight more is diluting our purpose, that of relief, which to my thinking, is violation of Mariner's Human Right in the present times.

Let's be sure of what we want, please.
I am.

Manish Singh
Ch.Off

Thanks
Brgds
Captain D.K. Misra
Master
FONJS SEKHON PVC

Motor Tanker "Flying Officer Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon PVC"

Relief appeal

To: Capt XXXXXXXX, DGM FP, M&M
Cc: Mr XXXXXXXXXXX, Mgr, FP, M&m
Cc: Mr XXXXXXXX, GM, FP

Dear Sir,
This is about my strong urge to get a leave after over 4 months of service in the light of changing times and personal attempts to adjust to it.
Sir, I would want to tell you that in past three years I have successfully avoided any service tenure of over 6 months because of mounting stresses in the prevailing security scenario, increased ship surveys and ameliorated technology.
From year 2004 onwards I have given up on obtaining NRI status, deserted the vessel, all in extreme want of short tenures.
Such personal objectives have often prompted me to join most other better relief providing companies, but I still chose to be with you considering the fact that I started career with you and then it was my turn to pay you back.
But it seems like there would be no end to it then. Relief for all the ranks is not a new problem in the SCI. I have seen it right from cadet years to this day. But the SCI's miseries have gone on and on.
In 2001, the WTC attack brought about the ISPS code in implementation world over. Seafarer's shore leave and family carrying got ill-affected by that. I suffered no-shore-leave in port of Singapore.
Then with rapid changes in technology, in a self-witnessed time period of 1 year, China's unloading cranes were replaced by bigger and faster ones. The turn around time reduced from 3 days to 8-10 hours. Shore leave was again most seriously affected. I saw that while on board M.V. Pataliputra and Murshidabad.
Australia always had this state-of-the-art loader which performs full ship loading in 8-10 hours.
But SCI's sea-service tenure has always remained the same. Last year during an interview with Shell's Capt Richard Miller, I was asked as to why I would join them. I found it difficult to explain to him how a person from an over-populated country like India working on virtually over-populated ships of manning order 40-45 people was complaining about poor relief.
I have also taken up further studies to know and understand my trivial status in this fast changing world. In the past I have utilized my leaves as Sabbatical with same purposes.
There is again one such hour where I need a leave to, both, let off the steam and pursue my objective. I would want a very positive action on my appeal, and no cold comforts, to help me sustain myself longer for sea-services.

Regards,
Manish Singh
Ch/Off, M.T. Flying Officer Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon PVC.

29th May 2007
Demise of Lokesh
This is one of the most gloomy day yet. Buddy Lokesh passed away in a road accident last night-- another victim of Delhi’s despicable and mounting road rage.
What a bonjour he was.

Why a mariner be paid so much…………….(the answer)

Why a mariner be paid so much…………….(the answer)

So here I m attempting to answer the question which I had only raised to my own self

This is what I think…---

Salary of a mariner is rooted more in its historical backdrop than elsewhere. The very line of thinking—it’s for staying away from home; it’s a risky profession, -- are all a secondary line of reasoning. The primary and the basic line, in my opinion, would be the history of the profession. Men of seas had been raking the mullah from the time immemorial. Their traditional rights cannot be suddenly overthrown by arrival of a so-called the modern management thinking. The mariners have been getting it, and they should continue to get it, putting away any attempt to divert the treasure of the seas to any land lubber sitting miles away from the galore of green waters, in safe homes, doing what is called the commercial operations.
Now in this above viewpoint, I would want to make clear the fact that I have no intentions of underplaying the importance of management-thinking trained the commercial operators in this new-order world. So the treasures may at the most be shared between the hunters and the facilitators. But the facilitators should not be made to tower the hunters.
If were a management consultant, working with any renowned consultancy firm, I would have taken it to be extremely foolish to snatch away the righteous proportions of the booty being taken way from the bringers and giving away to the white collars. The newborn stake holders can and must join the party but without underplaying the importance of the original hunters.
In fact, during the year 2000 revamping consultancy of the SCI by Prise Waterhouse Coopers, the suggested methods were also in concurrence with the above. All that they had suggested was cutting down on excessive staff both on land and on ships and then increase the wages on the remaining ones. Their working methodology was in line with those foreign operators who are known to be the best in ship operations.
But owing to its Public Sector Undertaking status, the SCI could not put behind its other objective of public welfare. Hence it is continually exploring the path of business with social objectives fulfillment. The rightsizing could not have been affected overnight. So here we are, still on the warpaths, conflicting egos with other and striving each other’s fall.

TELL ME WHY should a mariner be paid so much????

TELL ME WHY should a mariner be paid so much????

Economics of nation has played a terrible game in deciding of this factor. My personal honest understanding is that it’s all because of the utter mismanagement. There is absolutely no reason for the soaring salaries of mariner vis-à-vis other professionals. They are not so high- caliber people, especially with the advent of the GPS. Navigation is a waltz now, I know for sure. Cargo- operations is a cake-walk, and marine engineering a vestige of un-complete semiconductor automation. Then why this tumescent salary?? In Indian scenario nothing can best explain it than the very effect of all pervading mismanagement.
During the early years of my cadetship, the crew was getting some Rs 80K salary. Then in year 2001, the massive policy change in the company due to governments impending Disinvestment plans, the SCI took up a Revamping, and reduced the crew salary to it’s real worth. They are ‘right’ paid now; so do the officers’ think. But what remained undone was the salary structure of the officers’ themselves. They could still soar high above only for the artificially, or say mis- managerially, created dearth of people. Year 2003 saw a brief glimpse of such nature only, when due to excessive flooding of officers’ in the market, they ran around on all kinds of vessels. The moral>>> with the abundance, the demand, and effectively the monopoly, can be easily curbed.
Give me a reason why the employer should not induct away so many people so as to ‘flood’ the market and then sit on the negotiation table??! Who will demand, and who will grant??! Tell me?? There is a sheer over-estimation of owns worth from the mariners’ community all over.
My disparate views cannot be the reasons for putting me outcast anyways. The strength of unity can never bring dead to life, or overturn the face of truth; period.
There are so many kinds of professionals in the market all over. They all have their right and the justified payment structure. What decides the true worth of a mariner in relation to the true worth of a software professional, or even a doctor?? What? He stays away from home for so long? , or takes so much risk as to go out to sea?, or the cargo he carries is worth millions? Does no other category of professionals fill up these lines? Is a patient’s life not worth a million? Then why not a doctor? Is a software guy not so high educated? Does an engineer not do an ingenious job?
Then how do the Europeans pay their mariners? Are they so much hi-salaried people there also??
Okay then, how do we decide who should be paid how much? Where will all the money earned from such hi-cost running of ship be disbursed? To its commercial managers, who sit-back safe in their offices with no inkling of the power of green seas? To the company? Will it not be a case of Profiteering, then? A profit-bringing worker must get his rightful money anyways. So how do we decide?
Don’t judge the side of righteousness by the side of the fence you are born in. it may even be on the other side. Make an unbiased honest observation, please.

A brief history of Time—after reading……

A brief history of Time—after reading……

Stephen Hawkings has vividly drawn the chronology of the entity upon which any chronology itself is drawn..the Time. How man’s idea of the world around him changed as ‘the sun moved round the earth’. A ‘Day’ itself is a unit of time and man could have realized that until he sensed something like that!!the idea of space and time has not occurred to other species of the planet. The whole story of Evolution moves along these edges..the two spectra of dimensions.—the space and the time.
As a mariner, sometimes I wonder how the whole very concept of navigation occurred to Man for the first time. I mean I have been looking at this same sky even before I became a mariner, but did I know that those star told a direction to move to?? Hah..we mostly think that they only tell our future. But they truly had more to say than what I, or you, or anybody for that matter, thinks. Mankind, as collective, sees and hears more from those stars. And going by Mr Hawkings account they also have the story of our life and death guised in the language of their own. The gravity, the relativity everything that encompasses our daily life has its origin from these same stars. And how comfortably do we live out our lives without bothering a bit about them.
Even more mesmerizing is the story of how man’s idea about the space has clicked, re-clicked, revised, improved, interpreted, re interpreted, amended, reverted-- over the passage of Time. And the whole process is forever ongoing. The search of Time is the search of our Life and Death. It’s much beyond the making of a clock. The science amalgamates well its mother, the Philosophy, as also reinforces its fraternal relationship with the Arts.. The Time is the strongest and the most omnipotent entity, they say. And then the Philosophy joins hand with the Religion to search for the strongest, perhaps the real super power of the Universe, the Time.
We started off with a thought to measure out the passing of time by our clocks and end up searching for the formation of our whole universe, the Big bang theory and the Steady State theory of it’s formation. And I am sure somewhere in between must have come the GPS(Global Positioning System) which has changed art of navigation to a child’s play forever. The sundial, the hourglass, the past, the present, the future, the idea of time travel, the gravity, the relativity, quantum theory, the light, whole very idea of a simplified theory of Governance of this Universe, how they all get rolled up into one is best described by this book. Individually they appeared so different and unconnected to me, before. Physics, chemistry, biology, Arts, Literature, Language..that’s how we see this sphere of Science and Arts. How they form a single sphere of Philosophy is understood when the thread of Time stitches through them. And yeah, they do have the ‘space’ for Religion and God as well. For, as Einstein says, ‘God doesn’t play dice’( to contravene his own theory of Quantum Mechanics!!!), he surely may be needing space, possibly as large as this universe, to play his game.

My Cadet Years

Seated L to R: Anna N Patil, PTI; Mr Rao, C/E/O; Capt K Gupta, Course Co-ord; Capt T D Hazari, Dean, Nautical Sciences; Capt M M Saggi, Dy Nautical Advisor, Govt of India; Mr A V Chaubal, Principal, MTI; and Capt Praveen Kumar, Faculty. Year 1998, April-- I have just been inducted as TNOC (or Cadet) in SCI and given my first epaulette.