The news broke out in the media months later, all it said was that a simple ill timed opening of hatch is all that took to sent thousand crores submarine to be sent back to docks for repairs. But I wasn’t satisfied with the answer, Indian Navy isn’t made of some chumps, it’s a professional force with many years of experience behind it. On top of all that submariners are a notch tougher than your average navy sailor. Staying underwater for months without any contact with the civilization requires nerves of steel. Maybe I am biased a bit because I am good friends with one of them but opening of hatch suddenly doesn’t sit quite well with me, with no further delay, I texted my good friend Ramesh to hangout ( name changed for sake of anonymity), he always let’s me know the insider stuff about his days spent under surface. The bell rang and I opened the door without even bothering to check who it was, he was all smiles with aviators on. We talked shit about some of our friends and college, pulling each other’s legs in between “You know Rita, the hottest girl
in our batch got married just last month?” Ramesh’s face showed no change in emotions “oh yeah?” He said casually, maybe the Navy has toughened him too much I wondered.
Finally things got around work and I decided to jump the gun on the story that’s been bothering me for a while. He finally relented after few nudges. His face slumped from anxiety “Nobody else is home I hope and hand me your phone, I don’t want our Chinese friends to listen” he said disassembling my phone like a gun.
The battery, sim and the phone all laid out in front of me. This wasn’t usual, at most he would switch off my phone and that would be it. “Dude nobody else is at home and missus is at parents home for the weekend” I assured him. Leaning in closer he began in a hushed up tone.
These are his excerpts…
I was there when it all happened, A bunch of us were sent for special training in Russia to operate our very own indigenous nuclear submarine. It was our very first patrol. Everyone was tensed yet honored. You never know when things could go critical (pun intended ). It was going well as per the book, we went down at the desired depth moving towards our location. This nuclear sub was a complete beast, it moved at the speeds that the conventional submarines couldn’t imagine to keep up with. After some X amount of days we were in some unfriendly waters. The captain ordered to slowdown as well as dived us further 100m. We did as he ordered, everyone was on their toes but it isn’t something out of ordinary, submarines are supposed to collect intelligence during peace time about enemy ships and their movements. By the way do you know that 90 percent of ocean remains unexplored? We often find some unexplained noises deep down in the ocean, it is usually logged under marine life, all the superiors were checking and cross checking their plans for snooping and scooting undetected. Everything was going according to plan until our passive radar detected something out of the blue. Passive sonar listen to all the noises under, it isn’t good enough to get the speed and range of the target but it’s good enough for initial recon. Was it an enemy submarine? Pakistan Navy? Nope not a chance. Then a Chinese sub maybe? Probably not, they are so noisy that we could have seen them coming from miles away. We had to make a call now either chase it or stay still and remain invisible. Well being Indian Navy we decided to go after it. We went full steam ahead towards the source of the noise. Now even our active sonar was switched on, it works on the principle of sending sound waves then those sound waves reflect back from the target giving us information on it’s speed and range more accurate than passive radar but it has a major downside, we are now emitting sound, submarine aren’t supposed make noise! It doesn’t matter though. We are now moving ahead with full speed already so being detected is an after thought anyways. 70 knots the sonar guy shouted. Strangely enough the object had reduced its speed now, almost moving to halt within seconds, it wasn’t possible! Not with the tech that’s known. The distance was closing down between us. But the antics of that thing weren’t over, it started to move towards us. The game of hide and seek was over, that creature or thing whatever it was had only one intend by moving towards us and it was to ramp against us, obviously we weren’t gonna just sit around, we fired our torpedoes but our torpedoes seemed to be disappeared inside a black hole. No confirmation of hit or denotation. The situation was getting out of hand. There was no way to dodge it either, it was just way too fast, any changes in our bearings were quickly matched by it, all we could do was brace for impact. The sailors were in chaos, almost half of the crew was trembling in fear, as if the psyche of our crew has been breached before the hull itself. There were shouts and moans for help & bargain, the superior tried to get hold of situation but what can you do when half of your crew seems possessed, some of them even started speaking in tongues! As quick as that thing appeared it vanished away without any trace. Everything was as good as before almost as if nothing happened aside from one thing, one of the hatches was opened! Opening a hatch manually at such depth is almost impossible feat of strength. We got hold of the culprit quickly enough, he was altogether a different man, hypnotized and speaking in tongues, while the rest of the crew recovered, the guy had went completely bonkers, he was arrested and quickly locked in the ad hoc jail made out of a cabin. His presence was terrifying; sailors who had a watch duty would have terrifying dreams and hallucinations. No one wanted to be around that room. Soon enough we surfaced at our home, the entire patrol was a failure without any logical explanation for it.
“What happened to the guy?” I interrupted. He has broken out of cell, couple of Military Police guys were found knocked out last I heard. We drifted back to normal conversations and as hours flew away I bid adieu to Ramesh. A couple of hours I was greeted by couple of guys in suits straight out of some cliché X files or Men in Black, they asked me some questions about Ramesh and answered none of mine in return, the reason I wrote this down is because I want someone to know what went down, the lights are out which isn’t unusually but weirdly enough even the inverter isn’t working. Someone is banging my door for last 15 minutes, as I reached out to my phone to dial 100, the screen displayed, No Sim Card Detected.