🌀 Narrow Escapes

By Biswajit Basu:

1993:

It was 12 March 1993.  I was in Bombay for work and staying at the Oberoi.  My brother-in-law was coincidentally also in Bombay at the Ambassador and so we decided to meet for dinner after work.

But he suddenly called to say that he had to return to Calcutta that very day and so our dinner was cancelled.

Since I was staying back only for the dinner, I decided to also return to Delhi that night itself as there was no need to stay on in Bombay.  For this I had to change my Indian Airline ticket to get a fresh reservation.

I waddled over to the Indian Airline reservation office (in the Air India building) and waited what seemed like hours for my turn to get a new reservation for that night.  Finally, I got my ticket changed and walked back to my room in the Oberoi.

Suddenly I heard a deafening blast.  Later on, I came to know that terrorists had bombed the Air India building where I had been just  minutes before.  I would probably have been dead if I had to wait a little longer to reach the counter.

A very narrow escape indeed!

(Author Note: More about the 1993 Mumbai bombings is here.)

1973:

But I had another earlier providential escape.  In end 1973, my leave was over and I had to join back.  I was to get married in January 1974 and so I asked for a transfer to a coastal vessel so that I could fly home from any Indian Port.  I was very happy when I was posted to MV Sonavati, a coaster.  I reported to the ship in Calcutta and I was walking back to the dock gates to catch a taxi when I met our boss, Mr Joseph who stopped his car and asked me to hop in.  Once in the car, he told me we were going to the office as I had been transferred to the Jalamatsya sailing for the West Coast of USA, instead.  I protested but Mr Joseph said it was an emergency and assured me I would be flown back to be in time for the marriage wherever in the world I was.  Mr Joseph was known to be a perfect gentleman and I had no doubts about his promise.  I sailed out that night.

A few days into our voyage, I heard the terrible news.  Sonavati had sailed out from Calcutta  for Colombo with a consignment of Tata trucks.  In violent weather in the Bay of Bengal, somewhere off Vizag, the steel wire tethers of the trucks loosened and the trucks started moving about in the hold till one broke loose  and exited out of the ship's hull and fell into the sea leaving a huge hole in the side of the ship.  The sea entered and the ship went down in a few minutes.  Some lifeboats were launched and some jumped into the sea and were rescued.  But some could not because of the violence of the ocean.  They were eaten by sharks in full view of their colleagues.  One of them was the person who was my replacement.

That was a narrow escape otherwise I might have been shark food.

I was told the details of that terrible night by my Electrical Officer (a Sonavati survivor) on a later voyage on the Jaladhruv.

MV Sonavati Wreck site 

(Credit: Wrecksite.eu)

(Author Note: MV Sonavati sank in a cyclone 150 miles off Vishakhpatnam on December 08, 1973. An account by wreck survivor Shashanka Choudhury is in post #53 in this discussion thread.)

(MV Jalamoti, Scindia shipping, which picked up the survivors according to the survivor account of Mr Shashanka Choudhury. Photo from Shipspotting.com)

⛴️ Paddle Steamer Memories

From Biswajit Basu:

These memories are from my early days in Marine College:

While I was appointed to Garden Reach Workshops (GRW, which later became GRSE), for my apprenticeship, my dear friend (from school), Ramakrishna Nair was allocated RSN (the River Steam Navigation) Company which had its works a little downstream from GRW on the Hooghly.

Sometimes, I would bunk from GRW and spend the workday with Nair in RSN (which later became CIWTC).  Those were delightful days which we spent on the old and dilapidated paddle steamers that were tied on the river.  We would admire the gleaming 'open' steam engines with their huge crankshafts and imagine them chugging along on the river.  The gleaming copper fittings on the boilers, guage glasses and asbestos lagged steam pipelines were fascinating and I remember  them with great nostalgia today.  We would drink tea from earthen cups and, leaning over the side of the paddle steamers, watch the floating objects on the river pass by. Those were delightfully languid times and the years were 1966-69, more than half a century ago!

(India’s only surviving paddle steamer as of 2022. Photo credit: Times of India, 2022)

(Author note: More about Marine College is in 

this post.)