Life in The Navy....

27 Nov 1989... INS Mandovi Goa....
About 72 young aspirant naval officers arrive at this naval base. These young guys belong to different regions, religions.. cultures etc.. and display a kind of diversity that is quite common in our country. Each one looks different in his hair style, type of clothes , but there is one common factor... an anxiety on what lies ahead in the journey of "Naval training" and engineering. What is different about this course as compared to "NDA" or "NAVAL ACADEMY" cadets is that these guys have joined to earn their engineering degrees and become the technical offciers of the Indian Navy  So while there are most who are hard core defence oriented cadets, some of them have joined basically to earn their B Tech. degrees at the cost of the Indian navy.
So, as each one of these young guns arrive here, you can see different characteristics, some of them boisterous and daring in their approach, some timid and shy, while some of them are the intellectual variety who would rather watch and learn. And the camaraderie that is going to be injected into them during the training is already started as they help each other in loading their "steel trunks" and suitcases into the "3-tonner" waiting to pick up them at the station.
The Naval academy Goa is the training establishment for all Naval Executive cadets and the technical cadets start their traning here with a six months Naval orientation program. So these special cadets are called "Techies" in this academy by all their seniors to differentiate them from the other cadets. Well, confusion has always been the name of the game... what is going to happen to us? what is this naval orientation? where have we come? a number of questions ponder in these young minds?
One of the boys in the group was looking way too small and young compared to the other guys.. He was from Maharashtra and his voice had yet not broken. So naturally, he was the first target for all the seniors. He was made the in-charge for all the techies batch arriving and was supposed to guide and co-ordinate the settling down into the respective dormitories. While many of us were terrified at the prospect of being ragged by our seniors. TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>